California 

egional 

acility 




MY SUDAN YEAR 



BY 



E. S. STEVENS 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE VEIL." "THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD," "THE EARTHEN 
DRUM." "THE LURE." AND "THE LONG ENGAGEMENT" 



WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



INTRODUCTION 

object of this book is a very simple one. 
It delivers no new and startling facts or 
theories about the Sudan ; it may possibly contain 
erroneous statements or judgments. It is but an 
attempt to convey to the tourist or fireside traveller 
something of the interest and charm of the Sudan 
in an unambitious form. Statistics and Blue 
Books mean little to most people ; but an account 
of the passing incidents, trifles, and characteristics 
which have arrested the attention of an idle 
traveller may form for them a picture of the country 
which an enumeration of facts would merely blur. 
Perhaps the mothers and sisters of Englishmen 
whose work lies out in the Sudan may find in 
this book a setting for their thoughts, a coloured 
background for their imaginings of the lives and 
doings of those in whom they are interested. 



2045778 



vi INTRODUCTION 

The title was chosen more with a view to the 
series to which this book is to belong than with 
regard to actual fact. I have not spent a summer 
in the Sudan ; few women ever do. The expression 
" year " must be taken, therefore, figuratively. 

I should like to take this opportunity of thanking 
those who so kindly helped me in collecting in- 
formation, especially Miss Bewley, Mr. T. W. 
Sagar, Captain G. S. Symes, D.S.O., Mr. Stanley 
Dunn, and Mr. K. C. P. Struve. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER P18B 

I. GETTING THERE 1 

II. THEN AND Now ..... 12 

III. DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM , 24 

IV. FIAT Lux .38 

V. THE BENDING TWIG .... 49 

VI. " THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " . .64 

VII. "GHOSTS" 79 

VIII. OMDURMAN 92 

IX. SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS . . 99 

X. To THE SUDD AND BACK . . .115 

XI. To THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) . 132 

XII. To THE SUDD AND BACK .146 

XIII. To THE SUDD AND BACK .157 

XIV. To THE SUDD AND BACK .171 

XV. To THE SUDD AND BACK . 186 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI. To THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) . 198 

XVII. To THE SUDD AND BACK .211 

XVIII. To THE SUDD AND BACK . 225 

XIX. SOMETHING ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO 

LIVE "FoK" . . . .236 

XX. BAGGARAS AND NUBAS . ' . . 259 

XXI. SIMPLICITY AND THE SMILE SUPERIOR 281 

XXII. THE OUTLOOK . . , . 290 

APPENDIX .... 303 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

OUR ATTENDANT NUGGEE . ^ ^^ . Frontispiece 

FACDTd PAQH 

SMALL GIRLS WASHING CLOTHES AT OMDURMAN . . 16 
WASHING VEGETABLES IN THE EARLY MORNING, OMDURMAN 35 
JURS AT MVOLO (BAHR-EL-GHAZAL) . . ; "* . ., 60 
JURS AT MVOLO CARRYING IN THEIR TRIBUTE . ' ' . . 68 
A FAIR LADY OF OMDURMAN . . ; . . .70 
A LADY OF SIX-FOOT-FIVE IN OMDURMAN .... 92 
NATIVE POTTERY MARKET, OMDURMAN .... 95 
JUR GRANARY IN A SMALL VILLAGE NEAR MVOLO . .110 
A SUDD-SCAPE . . . , * , '' . . . 116 
MEN OF THE JUR TRIBE BUILDING HUTS .... 124 
GROUP AT OUR FIRST WOODING STATION . . . .138 
THE RAILWAY BRIDGE AT COSTI . ... . 143 
SHILLUK HIPPO HUNTERS, HILLET-ABBAS . . . 144 

A VILLAGE SHOP 154 

THE DILUKA IN PROGRESS . . . . * . 156 
VIEW IN KODOK (FASHODA) .... . . 160 

SHILLUKS' VILLAGE 162 

DONKEY TRANSPORT CROSSING THE NA'AM RIVER . .164 
WEAVER NESTS IN AMBATCH TREES, BAHR-EL-ZERAF . 181 



x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACJKQ PAGB 
THE DEEDOER AT WOBK . . . 183 

A VIEW OF THE CELEBRATED " CUT " BETWEEN THE BAHR- 
EL-ZERAF AND THE BAHR-EL-GEBEL .... 188 

THE MEAT HUNG OUT TO DRY 190 

CUTTING UP THE CROCODILE 192 

CHOPPING UP THE SUDD FOR SUDDITE .... 196 
THE GRAVE OF A NIAM-NIAM CHIEF . . . .198 
SULTAN YANQO OF THE MERIDI 200 

NIAM-NIAM WOMEN TAKING WATER FROM THE UPPER COURSE 
OF THE NA'AM RIVER 208 

NUERS IN THE BAHR-EL-GHAZAL 213 

THE HARLEQUIN COIFFURE OF THE NUER WARRIOR . . 215 

GHABAT-EL-ARAB . . 218 

OUR STEAMER FLANKED BY THE TWO NUGGERS . . 232 

ERKOWIT, THE HILL STATION OF THE SUDAN . . . 234 

THE " OMDA " OF THE DINKAS AT MELUT. . . . 240 

DINKA CANOE ON THE WHITE NILE, NEAR MELUT . . 250 

IN A SHILLUK VILLAGE 254 

A GROUP OF BRAVES 256 

NUBA COUNTRY, EMIRA HILLS . . . . - . . 262 

SUDANESE WOMAN MAKING BREAD 280 

VILLAGE SCENE, WHITE NILE . . . 290 



MY SUDAN YEAR 



CHAPTER I 

GETTING THERE 

TT was in the summer of 1910, after my return 
from Syria, that I first came into indirect 
contact with the Sudan. In London I chanced to 
meet some men from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 
all in high spirits at being back in England after 
their yearly exile. One of them showed me a 
number of Mr. Morhig's excellent photographs of 
the Sudan, and, while turning these over, I formed 
a vague desire to visit the land which could ex- 
ercise such a fascination on these men even while 
they were rejoicing to leave it. Unmeasured 
swamps, uncouth beasts, savages who, like Mr. 
Shaw's woad-stained Britons, considered respecta- 
bility sufficiently propitiated by a coating of clay 
and a bead or two : photographs and tales of 
these stirred the imagination and brought a 
1 



2 MY SUDAN YEAR 

breath of adventure into the greyness of a wet 
London summer. My Englishmen abused the 
life of course who ever met the Englishman who 
did not grumble ? They were like boys at a 
public school home for a holiday ; ready to 
declare they had left a miserable hole ; but ad- 
mitting, nevertheless, that there was nothing like 
it, and that they could never settle down in Eng- 
landnever, that is to say, until the years should 
come of which Solomon wrote in his sorrow, that 
there was no pleasure in them. 

But the wish, so casually formed, was, after the 
manner of casual wishes, suddenly fulfilled. Early 
in the following winter, I took passage on the 
comfortable Nord-Deutscher-Lloyd steamer Prinz 
Heinrich, and arrived in Cairo, where I arranged 
to go south by one of Messrs. Cook's river-craft 
those floating palaces which ply between the 
Northern capital and Assuan, and thence on to 
Wady Haifa. For no one, if he is not tied for 
time, should travel by train in Egypt more than 
is absolutely necessary. The old high-road of 
Egypt is its river, a highway on which men go 
down to the sea in feluccas and dahabiyahs after 
the manner of ages, and white sails are ever spread 



GETTING THERE 8 

like protecting wings over cargoes journeying up 
and down. 

The railway is too abrupt. It jerks you like a 
hooked minnow from one century into another, 
it blinds you with dust, it shakes you, it makes 
your bones ache, it is abominably hot it pre- 
cipitates you into burning tropics while you are 
still blinking from your London fog. The Nile 
on the other hand bears you gently on its broad 
bosom in comfort and leisure. The history of ten 
thousand years unrolls itself before you as you pass 
village after village, city 'after city, temple after 
temple. There is no indecent haste. The very 
river moves placidly. It has time to mirror the 
palm groves, the serrated brown houses, the domes 
and minarets, the funereal comeliness of Philse, 
the massive temples of Abu Simbel, the limpid 
skies at sunrise and sunset. It is a spectacle of 
such variegated beauty that you are never sated. 
Moreover, you become gradually acclimatised as you 
exchange the agreeable coolness of Cairo for the 
summer of Luxor and the tropical heat of Assuan, 
and, passing from Assuan into the golden deserts 
of Nubia, reach the Tropic of Cancer, where the 
Southern Cross glitters in the sky of nights, and 



4 MY SUDAN YEAR 

the wind is dry and fervent and pure from its 
long sojourn over sunbaked wastes. 

And the Nile is the river with more personality 
than any other in the world. Its very name calls 
up, like the Witch of Endor, the ghosts of mighty 
dead, the pageants of buried centuries. Invokes 
the pomp and circumstance of the Pharaohs and 
the Ptolemies, it brings up the shadowy histories 
of mummied kings and queens ; the loves of 
Antony and Cleopatra, and the happier passion 
of the great Rameses for slender Nefert-tari, the 
queen of all his queens ; the woman who held his 
tenderness in the hollow of her little hand till her 
body was laid to jewelled rest in the barren moun- 
tain side at Thebes. The perfume and humanity 
of these arise fresh as they did thousands of years 
ago. There are other memories too, for the 
transports which bore relief to Khartoum passed 
this way on their futile journey southwards to 
arrive too late ; and to Haifa on the same water- 
way came the later vengeance, when Kitchener 
poured men and railroad makers into the Sudan, 
that he might fling his battle line forward. These 
are phantoms that call for thought ! 

Haifa has changed mightily since the days of 



GETTING THERE 5 

which the late G. W. Steevens wrote in his wonder- 
ful book " With Kitchener to Khartoum." Every- 
one who goes to the Sudan reads that book, for it 
brings the great drama of the annihilation of the 
Dervish troops before the vision as no other 
history has ever done. The very clang of the 
busy hammers and the rattle of the steam engines 
are in your ears as you read his description of the 
Haifa of 1898. " Kailways run along every dusty 
street, and trains and trucks clank up and down 
till Haifa looks for all the world like Chicago in a 
turban." 

There are no engines running loose in the streets 
now, no cheerful battalions on their way to the 
front. But in a certain compound of the town 
aged men sit and sometimes talk of those times. 
They are the " political prisoners," men who led 
hosts into battle in the name of the Mahdi, and 
among them is the great Emir Osman Digna, a 
white-haired and pleasantly-spoken old gentleman, 
with much of fallen greatness in his mien. 

For the rest, Haifa is a peaceful place enough, 
with its neat row of European-built houses along 
the river-front, its mosque and hospital, and a 
growing native town rather less smelly and dirty 



6 MY SUDAN YEAR 

than the average Egyptian town. You wander 
down the main souk and buy Sudanese beads and 
curios from an elderly merchant who dozes at a 
corner shop, and realise that, somehow, there is 
a different atmosphere about this place. The 
ofncial seems more alert, more paternal, the 
native more respectful. It is a subtle something 
which tells you that you are at last in the 
Sudan. 

For most travellers Haifa is merely the memory 
of a railway station. Outside that station women 
crouch on their heels with open baskets, in which 
are exposed for sale such commodities as native 
loaves of bread, long and flat, biscuit-like rings of 
semit sprinkled with sesame, fat green melons, 
oranges and knobbly shammams. The fourth-class 
passengers native of course buy from these 
women provisions for the twenty -four hours' jour- 
ney. Inside, the train is waiting, the white desert 
train, shuttered down to keep out the blistering 
sun. The platform for the last half-hour has 
been a kaleidoscope of colour and life. There is 
a group of veiled ladies the household of an 
Egyptian officer returning south he himself as 
modern as army regulations can make him, the 



GETTING THERE 7 

women looking coeval with the Pyramids in their 
black habbaras and white face-veils. They are 
bundled hastily into the train. There sits an 
Arab of patriarchal appearance, surrounded by all 
his goods ; and beside him a good-tempered six- 
foot-two Sudani, his black face one grin, his 
cheeks decorated by horizontal gashes to show his 
tribe. There are plenty of effendis Egyptian 
Government clerks and officials in irreproachable 
tarbushes and black coats. Yonder goes a Scottish 
engine-driver in dirty khaki in close conference with 
a black mechanic. Beyond is a cluster that might 
have dropped from Hurlingham, ladies on their 
way down, conversing under dainty parasols with 
some spick-and-span English officials and a sub- 
altern or two returning from leave. 

In short, Haifa is a railway station of character, 
for few people, except tourists, make that twenty- 
four hours' journey with the idea of spending only 
three days at the other end. Most of the passengers 
are preparing for months of work or sport, in 
surroundings so different from those they left 
behind in England that they might be preparing to 
jump over centuries into the Middle Ages. The 
white desert train is going to provide the transport. 



8 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Many of them are purposing to journey yet a 
thousand miles south to that swampy Garden of 
Eden in Central Africa where clothes are dispensed 
with and money is not. They are not going for 
a week-end, either. Thus it comes about that 
Wady Haifa Station has an atmosphere of its 
own. 

A horn blows it sounds like a tin trumpet ; 
and those who are seeing off, fall back ; those 
who are departing step inside, and the train moves 
off. 

You find that an electric fan, a berth, a washing 
basin and soap are provided in each compartment ; 
and you settle down beside the violet-tinted pane 
to watch the desert glide past. It is one vast 
expanse of yellowish brown, varied here and there 
by a little scrub ; here and there by a few palm 
trees, and all the way by telegraph wires ; but it 
is a huge nothingness and barrenness spread out 
to scorch beneath the tropical sun to scorch from 
the moment the huge ball arises on the horizon till 
it sets in a theatrical blaze, casting long shadows 
to the east of every stone and boulder, and playing 
fantastic tricks with the dazzled vision. There 
is no respite, no cool dew of eve or cover of chasing 



GETTING THERE 9 

clouds ; only the sun, emperor and tyrant, set 
in a pallid sky too fervent to be blue. You tire 
of it at last the monotony has nothing to offer 
you. 

It is only after dinner that you realise how 
beautiful this desert can be. At sundown it 
flamed like a Mexican opal, but it did not touch 
your heart. When the train stops to water at 
Station No. 6, you step out into the coolness of 
night on to a champaign of faery. The moon sails 
like a goblin argosy in the sky, and the sand is 
turned into powdered snow and silver. Acacias, 
black and delicate against a vault in which the 
stars have faded before the greater light, brush 
the lonely station hut set in the waste, and the 
tall unlovely tank and mystery walks on the 
long moonlit horizon. 

An English colonel close by is telling some 
ladies who have just dismounted that, in the days 
when this was the Sudan Military Railway instead 
of the Sudan Government Railway, it was here 
that Kitchener dug for water and to the surprise 
of every one found it, and convinced the native 
that the hand of Allah was with him. His second 
and third attempts were not so successful, but the 



10 MY SUDAN YEAR 

fourth again saw his hope realised and the brave 
little train refreshed on its way. 

Our train has been refreshed too ; the horn sounds, 
and we get in, this time to bed. The old traveller 
warns you to cover everything you possess, and 
in the morning you find that he is right, for in 
spite of the closed shutter and violet pane, every- 
thing is thickly powdered with sand. Your mouth 
is gritty, the soap scrapes you, your very clothes 
must be shaken, your black shoes have become 
white. 

Some one mentions baths. Atbara Station is 
near. You meant to think of the Battle of the 
Atbara when you arrived at that historical place, 
but, as a matter of fact, you think only of baths. 
And you discover a bath worthy of the name, 
broad and deep and hot a bath indeed. That 
half-hour is the happiest of the day. For the 
rest, the hours crawl on with the thermometer 101 
in the shade, and you keep up an interest in life 
by meals and by an occasional excitement, such 
as a vision of the squat pyramids of Meroe against 
the sky-line. Professor Garstang's excavating 
camp is close by, a cluster of white tents. You 
consume a great deal of liquid. It is not a tempera- 



11 

ture to travel in. The railroad follows the Nile 
now, and passes brown village after brown village 
built of sunbaked mud. You sink into a torpor. 
At last, late in the afternoon, you cross the 
broad river, over a brand-new bridge, eighteen 
hundred feet of it, and see a vision of white houses 
and green trees, and then of a big railway station 
with many trucks and signals and rows of brown 
houses. You have arrived at Khartoum capital 
of the Sudan. 



CHAPTEB II 

THEN AND NOW 

o get a rough idea of the shape of the Sudan, 
imagine a large plaice, laid on the map 
so that its head is at Haifa at the north and its 
tail at the Lado Enclave at the south a district 
of some seventeen thousand square miles which 
was added to the southern province of Mongalla 
in 1910. From north to south the Nile forms an 
irregular backbone, the Blue Nile wandering up 
from the east to Khartoum, and the main stream, 
the White Nile, finding its source in Victoria 
Nyanza through Lado, at the extreme tip of our 
fish's tail. To the west of the White Nile lies the 
big province of Kordofan, covering an area larger 
than Portugal ; farther west still Darfur, whose 
independent Sultan, Ali Dinar, looks with mis- 
giving at the railway recently opened between El 
Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, and Costi on the 
river, which makes it possible to perform in twenty - 

12 



THEN AND NOW 13 

four hours the journey from Khartoum, which, 
by river and canal, took formerly twelve days. 
AH Dinar may well feel uneasy. This means an 
iron fist thrust towards his own domain a 
territory as big as England. 

Below these two and touching the boundaries 
of each stretches the triangular district of the 
Bahr-el-Ghazal, the region of swamp and malaria. 
In the north-east corner of our fish lie Haifa 
Province and then Suakin Province reaching the 
Red Sea. Then the eastern boundary bends 
abruptly inwards, and encloses Senaar Province 
and farther south the Mongalla Province, which, 
as I have said, comprises the Lado at the tail. 
This is the roughest description, but it may serve 
to elucidate the geography of the country for 
those to whom maps are apt to convey indiges- 
tible facts. The total area of the whole Sudan, 
as Sir Auckland Colvin points out, is well over 
a million square miles, or about two-thirds of 
China. 

Dividing the fish into three pieces horizontally, 
Khartoum is situated at the bottom of the first 
third, just above the point where Blue Nile and 
White Nile meet. Properly speaking, it lies on 



14 MY SUDAN YEAR 

the Blue Nile. Omdurman is on the opposite 
bank, past the blending of the streams. 

It is confusing, by the way, that the Nile flows 
northward and that " up-stream " means south- 
ward. A unique feature of the Nile is that it 
is self-supporting. It gets broader instead of 
narrower as it approaches its source, and, proud 
and generous to the end, carries its largesse to 
Egypt and the Delta without the help of tribu- 
taries. 

Khartoum itself has the pert prosperity of a city 
of recent growth. The hand of Lord Kitchener 
is visible in its symmetrical plan. Houses seem 
to be companies and battalions formed into neat 
squares and ready at a word of command to march 
further in orderly rows over the desert. The 
streets are very wide ; there is an indescribable 
feeling that the town is a camp, that its life is as 
artificial as the life of a city of tents. And that 
impression is deepened by the perpetual bugle calls 
and sounds of military music. 

A plan of the town is before me as I write. It 
is as mathematically divided into squares and 
diamonds as a wall-paper or as a number of Union 
Jacks, and is pyramidal in form ; the base, two 



THEN AND NOW 15 

miles long, extending along the Blue Nile. On 
the other side of the river, united by the new 
railway bridge, is Khartoum North, where the 
Government dockyard and stores, also a suburb 
of native houses, are situated. 

The most pleasant walk in Khartoum is along 
the river Embankment Street is its ridiculous 
name with its shady walks of lebbakhs and 
acacias and gum-trees ; private houses and care- 
fully-tended gardens on one side and the river 
with Tuti Island to the north-west on the other. 
Here English nursery-maids bring their charges in 
the cool hours of the day, along it tourists mounted 
on donkeys rejoice in the sudden shade and respite 
from the frizzling heat ; and below the bank lie, 
sweltering in the sun, the white Government 
steamers prior to setting forth on their journey 
southwards, while just above them the sakya 
creaks its mournful song. A sakya, for those 
who do not know, is a contrivance for drawing 
water from the river for irrigating purposes by 
means of a wheel turned by oxen. The small boy 
sits behind them, singing or dozing. In the latter 
case, the oxen, missing his reminders, gradually 
cease their weary round and drowse too in the 



16 MY SUDAN YEAR 

heat of the day. The tune of the sakya may soothe 
you or may set your teeth on edge. There is a tale 
of an Englishman who, maddened by the noise, 
gave a sakya driver oil and backsheesh so that he 
might be troubled no more. But the owner of the 
sakya came to him with an injured countenance. 
" How is it possible/' he asked, " for me to know 
whether the sakya is working or not, now that I 
cannot hear it ? '' 

The other principal thoroughfare is Victoria 
Avenue, also planted with trees, but these are as 
yet in their extreme youth. Just where Victoria 
Avenue is intersected by Khedive Avenue, stands 
one of the most important and dramatic monu- 
ments of the place the Gordon Statue. It is 
seen from four quarters. Troops pass it all day 
long. It culminates the broad entrance to the 
Palace Gardens. It is the focus of the town, this 
simple bronze effigy of a man on a camel. The 
statue of Gordon Pasha dominates the city, as 
does his indomitable spirit of patriotism and 
faithfulness unto death. But a short distance 
from the statue, Dervish spears were dipped in his 
blood ; but a stone's throw away Kitchener and 
his staff bared their heads at the retaking of the 



THEN AND NOW It 

city, while the funeral service was read over the 
spot where the martyr fell. 

There are many legends about the statue. The 
natives regard it with awe. One old black woman, 
who used to be attached to Gordon's household, 
was said to sit here for hours together because, 
she said, it sometimes smiled at her. Others 
declare they have seen it move. An Englishman 
was once looking at the statue, when a Sudanese 
who had paused also informed him that the 
likeness was excellent on the whole, but that 
" the colour was not right. " " I knew him well," 
said the old man, " and he was as white as you ! " 

In the Palace Gardens a rose-bush is still 
cherished that was, it is said, planted by Gordon's 
hand. In the Palace chapel, his favourite hymn, 
" Abide with me/' is still sung after evensong on 
Sundays. If ever the spirit of a man walked the 
scenes of his lifetime, then surely the great and 
honest spirit of General Gordon stalks about 
Khartoum. 

The day after my arrival in Khartoum happened 
to be the day on which a garden-party was given 

at the Palace, " to meet Lord Kitchener." The 
2 



18 MY SUDAN YEAR 

present Agent-General of His Majesty's Govern- 
ment in Egypt was then out of employment, and 
had just returned from a shooting trip on the Blue 
Nile. Lord Kitchener was, in fact, up in the 
Sudan after an absence of seven years, for pleasure 
and not business. Seven years before, Khartoum 
was scarcely raising her wounded head from the 
dust after the devastation of Dervish rule, for 
though much had been done in the five years of 
Anglo-British administration, that time was mostly 
taken up with recuperation. Now the Sudan had 
lived through seven years of healthy growth, and 
the differences to the eye must have been enor- 
mous. 

It was the holiday Kitchener that we saw that 
day of the garden-party, burnt brick-red, smiling, 
and as cheerful as a schoolboy. His especial wish 
had been to kill a fine kudu that was known to 
be in the neighbourhood of Sennaar, and secure the 
prize he did, within only an hour of the time fixed 
for his return. He had found leisure too, during 
his short trip, to open the new bridge at Kosti on 
the White Nile, to glance at all the improvements 
in Khartoum, to give lozenge advice to every one 
of the most practical description, praise to those 



THEN AND NOW 19 

who deserved it, and to keep the whole place busy. 
Such are the methods of the present British 
Agent ! 

The Palace Gardens are vastly different now from 
that wilderness into which Kitchener and his 
officers walked the day when the British and 
Egyptian flags were hoisted once more on the 
roof that Gordon had paced, searching for the help 
that came too late. Then the Sodom apples ran 
riot over the beds and lawns, and the Palace was 
a pitiable ruin. Now the rebuilt edifice presents 
a bland and imposing face, and there is a carpet 
of sward before it that might be the lawn in front 
of the Club House at Ranelagh. The garden is 
brilliant with red and white oleanders in full 
bloom, scarlet poinsettias, poinsianas, yellow taco- 
ma, sysybans, and glorious torrents of bougain- 
villea ; and the sward is shaded by mimosa, acacias, 
broad-leaved fig trees, orange trees and down- 
drooping banyans. 

The dazzling sunshine of this January day made 
one blink. The flowers provided colour, and so did 
the crowds on the lawn. I say crowds, because, 
though the white uniforms of civil officials and 
the coloured uniforms of army officers were inter- 



20 MY SUDAN YEAR 

mingled with light-coloured dresses and parasols, 
the native contingent, the local sheikhs and leading 
Khartoum merchants, kept to themselves, and 
looked like a page torn from the Old Testament. 

Lord Kitchener paused to converse with them 
when he had descended the Palace steps with the 
Governor-General between rows of coal-black giants 
in red and white ; and, later on, while every 
European was crowding into the marquees for 
tea and ices, I saw one after another detach him- 
self gravely from the throng, kneel down at a 
little distance from the rest, and repeat his evening 
prayers, with his face turned Mecca-wards. The 
sight of those prostrating figures brought the 
strange incongruities of the function before one as 
could no other incident during the afternoon. 

There were other paradoxes. Those same black 
giants in white embroidered with red to which I 
referred just now, the Sirdar's bodyguard, were 
old soldiers, many of whom must have fought 
against our troops years ago. And, not so odd 
perhaps when one considers that the Sudan is 
chiefly run by Scotchmen nowadays, it amused 
me to hear the native bands piping forth Scotch 
airs on Scotch bagpipes, with true Caledonian 



THEN AND NOW 21 

zest. The Sudanese are apt musicians. The regi- 
mental bands are brass and play in harmony, and 
no one in Khartoum need ever be ignorant of the 
latest musical comedy airs they are played in 
Khartoum as soon as in London. 

The bands were to the fore the next morning at 
the review which took place in the early hours. 
That was a sight to which I cannot do justice. 
All Khartoum and his wife poured out into the 
desert beyond the town. Omdurman sent its 
contingent of scallywags too. 

On the road to the parade-ground we met 
dog-carts, motors, horsemen and horsewomen, 
Egyptian ladies peeping out with veiled faces 
through the curtains of their carts, high officials 
on donkeys, and riff-raff on the same or on foot ; 
scantily clad women with naked babies, raga- 
muffins, functionaries and what not. Above us a 
cloudless sky, and a sun so powerful that the 
kites wheeling high up in the pure air cast clean-cut 
shadows on the scorched sand. And a wide 
horizon, a vast dun-coloured plain, broken only 
by a mud village or two, miles away, and a string 
of telegraph posts marching into the distance like 
pins stuck into a huge sheet of cardboard. The 



22 MY SUDAN YEAR 

troops were there stretched out in glittering 
lines, the red and green pennants of the cavalry 
fluttering out in the brightness like a row of tiny 
rags. A roped-in enclosure accommodated the 
ladies with chairs, and beside it stood the motor- 
car from the Palace. Kitchener paused to speak 
to its occupants for a few seconds, his horse switch- 
ing its long tail impatiently, before he cantered 
away. He was dressed, as some one put it tersely, 
like a loafer no spurs, no sword, no gloves. But 
when he pulled up by those blinking, twinkling 
lines of miniature men and horses out on the field 
of sand, and rode down the length of each, one 
realised that here was the man responsible for 
this pageant of Empire in a Desert. 

The march past brought a strange lump of 
emotion into one's throat. Many and many a 
man had faced our guns in that not far-distant 
past. The 9th and 13th Sudanese number in 
hundreds dervishes who joined our ranks after the 
battles of the Atbara and Omdurman. They 
made brave foes their smiling faces, brown and 
black, show that they can be loyal friends. The 
Sudanese march with a fine swing, and it was 
impossible to tell their age. Men of fifty looked 



THEN AND NOW 23 

as active as boys and as cheerful. Most, how- 
ever, were of the younger generation, upright 
fellows whom any man might be proud to com- 
mand. Among the native officers the Khalifa's 
son was pointed out to me. At first it seemed 
almost horrible that the son of this man above all 
others should serve his father's destroyers, but 
after a while one realised that it was a fine thing 
that, not only had our Government destroyed its 
enemies, but their enmity also. 

It was a sight worth remembering. The cavalry 
with their pennants ; the Arab mounted infantry 
with their brown and green turbans and dark 
intelligent faces, mounted on small Abyssinian 
mules ; the Cadets from the Military College ; 
the Camel Corps lurching and swaying forward ; 
the dangerous little Maxims looking so bright and 
workmanlike ; all passed and saluted ; and then 
came the gallop past with a thunder of hoofs, a 
clatter of wheels and a clanking of bridle chains. 
The review was over. Once again the glittering 
lines stood firm, and there was the sound of shout- 
ing, the " Effendimiz chok yasha ! " 

The bands struck up the Khedivial Hymn and the 
British National Anthem, and?the pageant was done. 



CHAPTER III 

DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 

rpHROUGH most of the nights of the year it 
is warm enough to sleep out of doors. In 
the hot weather you camp out on the roof, where a 
breeze may perchance fan you, with an earthen 
pitcher of water within reach. In the so-called 
cool weather your angareb * is placed in the veran- 
dah or garden, and there you lie watching the 
great stars nickering in a sky of vast clearness, or 
fireflies spangling the magic of the tropical moon 
if she is at the full, until you fall asleep. An 
extra blanket should be at hand, for the night 
grows chilly just before dawn. You can be 
awakened by a variety of causes : by the light 
always dazzling, by the bugling in the barracks, 
by a regimental band braying past, or by the 

* A native bed made of leather thongs on a wooden frame. No 
Sudani is without one, and few Europeans, as it is very comfortable, 

24 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 25 

strident note of the Sudan bulbul in the tacomas 
or acacias. 

You draw no mosquito curtain about you, for 
the energy of the medical officers of health has 
done away with the Khartoum mosquito. More 
than that a householder is fined 50 piastres if a 
mosquito is found on the premises. The mosquito 
breeds in stagnant water, therefore all stagnant 
water is treated with paraffin, or removed. In 
a town like Khartoum, where people used to stand 
up to their necks in water to be rid of the torment 
of the stings, this is more than triumph. 

It is only a part of the work of the sanitary 
authorities. Khartoum is one of the healthiest 
cities in the world, thanks to untiring vigilance.* 
The English official makes constant personal 
inspection himself, however efficient the native 
subordinate may be. Once there is a case of 
malaria or enteric, the cause is doggedly hunted 
down, and usually found. In 1909 there were 
some cases of malaria in the British Barracks. 
The Blue Nile was falling at the time, and leaving 

* The death-rate as recorded in the Report for 1910 was 7 per 
1,000 ; or 422 deaths in a population of 60,000 natives and Euro- 
peans. 



26 MY SUDAN YEAR 

pools in its bed near the Barracks. These pools 

were examined, the larvse of anopheline mosquitoes 

the species that brings malaria with it found 

in them, and they were treated. But as soon as 

fresh pools were formed, the larvse made their 

appearance in them too. The officer of health 

immediately suspected an irrigated field on the 

further side of the river, but the native inspector 

declared that it was innocent. However, a sanitary 

inspector near the farm himself developed malaria. 

The medical officer then made a thorough search, 

and discovered the fatal larvse in the channels that 

watered the crops. As soon as they were treated, 

there were no more cases of malaria. 

That is characteristic. An eternal war is waged 
on the bacillus, a contest as determined as 
Kitchener's campaign against the Khalifa. This 
year, rabies appeared at Khartoum, and in ex- 
perimenting, one doctor got some of the inoculated 
serum into his eye. It might have cost him his 
life ; he was forced to go down to the Pasteur 
Institute at Cairo for treatment. Happily, no evil 
result ensued. Mr. Wellcome, of the firm of 
Burroughes and Wellcome, has endowed the 
" Wellcome Tropical Research" Laboratories " at 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 27 

the Gordon College, where a war to the death is 
being waged on the diseases which have made 
tropical countries too often the grave of the white 
man. There the idiosyncrasies of the wicked 
little sleeping-sickness bacillus are being studied 
as a general studies the idiosyncrasies of the 
enemy, full reports of the work are published, and 
incalculable services are being rendered to the 
science of tropical medicine. 

To return to the point from which mosquitoes 
beguiled us. It is not always warm enough to 
sleep out of doors. There may be a " cold snap " 
when the thermometer is actually at 60 degrees 
Fahrenheit very cold, that, for the Sudan, and 
noticeable, owing to the draughty construction of 
the houses. You may be awakened, nevertheless, 
by the twittering of birds, for in Khartoum the 
sparrows make free of the houses, and even build 
their nests inside. They chirp, and fly in and out 
of the rooms, or perch on the furniture to look at 
you with impertinent bright eyes, as if they had 
a perfect right to be there. The Sudanese sparrow 
is as cheeky as the English sparrow, and not 
dissimilar. His plumage is not so dingy, how- 
ever, and he is smaller. The bulbul to which I 



28 MY SUDAN YEAR 

referred further back is one of the most familiar 
garden birds in Khartoum he is almost as big 
as a thrush, grey in colour and black-headed 
his notes are loud and cheery, if not very 
musical.* 

One can drink water with impunity at Khartoum. 
It is brought from the deep wells at Burri, and is 
pure and good. In the olden days women carriers 
and donkeys used to go about with water-skins 
and paraffin tins full of the precious liquid, but 
they have been replaced by taps, water-carts, 
and public drinking fountains, at which vessels 
may be filled for a small payment. 

As for food, it is always possible to get mutton, 
which is good, beef too, and unlimited chicken, 
but never veal or pork. The larder can be varied 
with sand grouse, wild duck or venison on occasions. 
Fish Nile fish is plentiful, but muddy and coarse 
in flavour. Milk and butter can be obtained from 
the Government Farm at certain times of the 
year both taste unlike English dairy products, 
but are prized and expensive. Vegetables are not 
plentiful, and green-stuff is almost precious. It 
is true that one can buy most of the vegetables 

* See Appendix A. 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 29 

of the earth in tins at one or other of the Greek 
stores, and Sudanese cooks are excellent at sauces 
in fact, it is sometimes impossible to recognise 
the dish for the sauce. Curry powder is dear to 
the Sudanese cook's heart but it is sometimes 
put to unholy uses. A certain civilian was back 
from a successful shooting trip, yet was informed 
by his cook that there was no meat. " What ! " 
said the civilian. " How about that gazelle ? " 
" Excellency/' said the cook, " the gazelle has 
gone very bad, and I have no curry powder ! " 

The Sudanese cook is on the whole cleanly, but 
he has peculiarities. The pig is an unclean animal, 
and he handles him under protest. One house- 
holder discovered his servant spitting devoutly 
on the accursed ham before bringing it in to 
breakfast. 

Sudanese servants are often Berberines a tribe 
born to serve, and serving, on the whole, ex- 
cellently. But the truth is seldom in them, and 
the English sitt (lady) does not always find her 
way a smooth one. Everything that goes wrong 
in the house is attributed to the Devil. Bishop 
Gwynne told me that one day his " boy " came 
to him and said, " The Devil is in the house." 



80 MY SUDAN YEAR 

" Oh," said the Bishop, " that is very interesting ! 
When did he arrive ? '' 

" He came in with the cook from the souk 
(market) yesterday evening." 

" Really ? " commented the Bishop, puzzled. 

" Yes, and in the night he came out of the cook 
and passed into me." 

" Oh, and what did he do ? " 

" He went to the cupboard and broke a plate 
and the top of the jam jar." 

A light broke in on the Bishop. 

" Oh he was after the jam ! I suppose he 
ate some ? " 

" Yes," said the boy ; " he did ! " 

Another long-suffering householder was told 
time after time that the Devil had broken his 
plates. Losing patience at last, he cried, " Well, 
you tell the Devil next time he comes to go into 

Captain 's kitchen and break his plates, 

instead of mine ! " 

The idea of devil-possession is not merely an 
elaborate form of excuse ; the native servant really 
believes in it. One man possessed a cook who 
at times had a devil who caused him to bubble 
and froth at the mouth. The other servants 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 31 

dared not go near him when he was possessed, but 
happily the Devil did not prevent his cooking. 
He would turn out an excellent dinner of several 
courses, bubbling all the while, but the dishes were 
pushed out to his frightened fellow-servants through 
the doorway not one would venture into the 
kitchen. 

Their idea of honesty is somewhat primitive. 
In the early times the Bishop of Khartoum shared 

a garden with Major . The Bishop, one of 

the most energetic of men, undertook to get the 
garden into shape himself, and laboured hard at 
it with a native gardener. He thought he might 
utilise the opportunity in other ways as well, and 
talked to the gardener of such improving subjects 
as the advantages of honesty and straight-dealing. 
The man responded intelligently and appreciatively. 
' Wallahi," he said, " your words are the words 
of God ! You speak truth." 

Next day the Bishop, not to harp on the ethical 
string too much, confided that he intended to 
build a hut at the end of the garden. The gardener 
asked of what materials he would build it. " Sun- 
dried bricks/' replied the Bishop, " and mud 
mortar." " Why not proper mortar ? >: " Be- 



S2 MY SUDAN YEAR 

cause lime is too expensive." The gardener 
beamed. " Do not let that trouble you ! I know 
where the bags of lime are kept at the Public 
Works, and to-morrow, after dark, you and I " 

One of the Bishop's suffragis,* by the way, was 
the Khalifa's water-carrier : he was found wounded 
near the Khalifa's body at the battle in which 
Abdullahi met his doom. 

There is a season in Khartoum, that is to say, 
from the end of December to the end of March 
there are dances, tennis-parties, a garden-party or 
so at the Palace, gymkhanas, picnics and polo. 
The gaieties are not on so large a scale as those of 
Cairo, but, as in a large hill-station in India, 
there is usually some engagement to write against 
every date, especially when the tourist invasion is 
at its height. There is a pleasant lack of swagger 
about these entertainments ; the Levantine ele- 
ment is entirely excluded, women do not over- 
dress, and those who do not possess pony-carts or 
dog-carts with smart little waleds like turbaned 
black imps perched behind, ride to dances or 
functions on donkeys. 
Indeed, every one rides on the unpretentious ass, 

* Table servants. 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 33 

from the British private who discourses cheerfully 
and profanely to the donkey boy alongside in 
plain Cockney or broad Scots, to the tourist and 
the high official. The hireable donkey is the taxi 
of Khartoum. He is mostly saddled with a stirrup- 
less native saddle covered with a dyed sheepskin, 
he is often without a bridle, and the fare is a 
piastre or two, or four for the afternoon. You 
direct his footsteps by prodding his neck or kicking 
his sides, and if this fails, the donkey boy tugs 
him into the way that he should go with blood- 
curdling sounds. The donkey boy is a barefoot 
chocolate-hued ragamuffin aged anything from 
eight to eighty, and he urges his charge along with 
an indrawn hiss which sounds like " I'll teach you 
in a minute ! " or a staccato " Arr ! " in his throat. 
Thus encouraged, the small beasts canter or trot 
along nimbly, however heavy their load. On 
the whole, they are well-conditioned little beasts, 
and have the long-suffering of angels, but it is as 
well to lift the sheepskin and see if there are saddle 
sores. 

The bray of the ass is heard from morning to 
night in the Sudan. There is nothing in the 

known realm of sound that can equal that 
3 



34 MY SUDAN YEAR 

passionate protest from its highest note to the 
pacified sob at the end. The Arabs tell a good 
tale about it. When the animals were first created, 
they say, the asses idled so much of their time 
away in paying court to their lady-loves that 
they neglected their work. In his anger, Allah 
swore that there should never be any more she- 
asses. Horrified at this, the donkeys lifted their 
voices and wept. Allah could not endure the 
noise. " For pity's sake, stop," said he, " and I 
will take back what I have said ! " The donkeys 
ended in a sigh of relief. But to this day they 
voice their feelings after the same manner. 

There are a good many grass tennis lawns in 
Khartoum. They need very careful watering, 
and are no good after the third year unless they 
are dressed and left unused. But polo is not 
played on grass (turf is too precious), but in the 
desert beyond Omdurman. The journey is made 
in the Governor-General's boat, the " Elfin," once 
one of Gordon's boats. It was discovered when 
Khartoum was re-taken in 1898, lying high and 
dry on the shoal, pock-marked with shot and shell, 
rotten, rusty, but with engines that were not 



* f 

* 




DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 35 

entirely past work. In its second incarnation it 
is as smart as white paint can make it, but it is 
interesting to think of its past history. On the 
long sandy shore of Omdurman, donkeys and 
ponies and dogcarts are waiting, and every one 
mounts or clambers in as the case may be, and the 
cavalcade starts through the maze of one-storied 
mud rabbit-hutches, that is Omdurman, for the 
desert beyond. A slight detour to the left will 
take you to the ruins of the Mahdi's tomb that 
grave of the faith of thousands ; and then over 
the huge square which the dervishes made their 
open-air mosque. The polo ground is visible from 
afar by its gay marquee, and the Sudanese In- 
fantry Band is rendering "The Girl in the Train " 
perfectly, though they have never as much as set 
foot in a theatre in their lives, and to sit through 
a musical comedy would cause their eyes to start 
out of their black heads with astonishment. It 
might be Ranelagh or Hurlingham but for the 
lack of green turf. Instead, the sand has been 
rolled hard. 

It is the last polo match of the season, and the 
Departments are playing the Infantry for the 
Challenge Cup. There is a cloud of dust, in which 



36 MY SUDAN YEAR 

you dimly discern men and ponies and swinging 
sticks ; the sun beats down swelteringly, the 
spectators consume tea or coffee or lemonade in 
the tent or its shadow, while a crowd of eager 
ragamuffins of all sizes and colours watch the 
proceedings from behind the barrier. Their teeth 
show in dazzling grins, their eyes glisten in their 
round dark countenances. There are little girls, 
too, with their hair plaited into at least two hun- 
dred tiny plaits over their heads, and greased with 
mutton-fat. 

It is over at last the Departments have won, 
and the ponies are being rubbed down by attentive 
syces. The band plays the two national anthems, 
and the proceedings end up with a horse-auction, 
one of the victors making an excellent auctioneer. 
Finally, the laws of our country are broken by a 
raffle, and when the pony so disposed of has fallen 
to a lady, every one, mightily contented, mounts 
his donkey or gets into his conveyance. 

The amazing thing is that this takes place on the 
very spot where, only thirteen years ago, within 
the short lifetime of some of the children who 
have been looking on, war-drums beat the Jehad. 
It does not strike the average Englishman as 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM 37 

incongruous. It is very characteristic of him, is 
it not ? The Englishman is never disturbed by 
time, place or climate. He eats his food, plays 
his games, and sings his hymns on Sundays, no 
matter where he is. He will probably do the 
same, or its disembodied equivalent, in the next 
world, whatever the Angels think about it. 



CHAPTEK IV 

FIAT LUX 

A TOURIST once made an epigram about the 
-^- Sudan which expressed neatly the impres- 
sion first gained by new-comers. " Apparently," 
he said, " the Sudan is run for the benefit of the 
unemployed sons of our nobility/' He might 
have added, " at the expense of the Egyptian 
Treasury," and voiced the bitter contention of 
some malcontents in Cairo. The second accusa- 
tion I shall deal with later on. But to the first 
bunch of critics it may be answered that, though 
these young sprigs of British aristocracy do come 
out to the Sudan, it is certainly not for amusement. 
They play, it is true, when circumstances allow, 
but they work with an unflagging will and en- 
thusiasm that would appal our ready-to-strike 
labouring classes, whose motto would seem to be, 
" Never put your heart into your work." 

38 



FIAT LUX 39 

The visitor to Khartoum is apt to imagine, after 
a week's stay during which he has had a remark- 
ably good time, that it is all play, because he meets 
his hosts only in their moments of relaxation. If 
he stays longer and keeps his eyes and ears open, 
the most casual observer will be undeceived and 
will gather that if the country is run for any one's 
benefit, it is certainly not exploited in the interests 
of those who have undertaken the difficult task 
of civilising, pacifying, and ruling it with justice 
and equity. 

In many parts of the Sudan the only hold the 
English inspector has on the natives is their belief, 
founded on experience, that the Englishman will 
weigh out justice with an impartial hand, and do 
his best to right wrongs and alleviate disaster 
with the unending capacity for taking pains that 
some one defined as genius. It is, in fact, a succes 
d'estime in the most literal sense of the phrase. 
Accustomed for generations to pillage, slaughter, 
slave-raiding, want and disease, the paternal 
methods of the Englishman come home to their 
intelligence with a shock. The Englishman is 
stark, staring mad, with his fussy ideas about 
' sanitation and his way of refusing bribes, but it is 



40 MY SUDAN YEAR 

a madness which brings blessings in its wake. 
So much is this the case, that before the rains come 
in the Khartoum district, the downfall is supposed 
to be more plentiful on the land on which the 
inspector has trodden during his circuit of in- 
spection, and the farmers set crops accordingly. 
As one man put it, " If Allah is pleased with the 
inspector, He brings rain to show that his feet are 
blessed.'* 

There is a tale in the Bahr-el-Ghazal about an 
old man who accused another of stealing his cattle. 
The Englishman listened to the plaintiff, who was 
supported by his son as witness ; then he had 
the accused brought before him and asked him 
what he had to say in defence. The old man arose. 
" Is this justice ! " he cried. " Come away, my 
son. This man listens to both sides ! " 

And two stories culled from the Annual Reports 
of 1909 and 1910 more human than most Blue 
Books, by the way, will be illustrative of the 
difficulties encountered by the English inspector. 

"A., a Dinka, stole ten bulls from B., another 
Dinka. B. tried to recover his cattle, whereupon 



FIAT LUX 41 

a court was assembled, chiefly composed of A.'s 
friends. There was no dispute, and A. fully ac- 
knowledged the theft. But the Court, while 
ordering that the cattle should be returned to B., 
not only adjudged no punishment to A., but since 
he had suffered all the trouble and risk of stealing 
the cattle and was going to derive no benefit 
therefrom, he should keep one of the stolen bulls 
for his hard fortune. The fact was that there was 
not one of the assembled judges but had, at some 
time in his life, stolen or attempted to steal a 
neighbour's cattle, consequently not one who 
could cast the first stone. Wherefore, it is easily 
seen why the Inspector, who caused restoration of 
all the captured cattle and also fined the thief, is 
looked upon as a brutal, and probably conscience- 
less innovator." (From the Report of the Upper 
Nile Province). 

(Gedid District). " A certain individual pro- 
mised a cow to a Fiki * if he could write a charm 
which would have the effect of making his wife, 
who had hitherto been childless, bear him children. 
The Fiki wrote the charm, and in course of time 
the woman became the mother of a son ; but when 
the Fiki asked the husband to fulfil his part of the 
bargain and hand over the cow, the husband 

* Religious teacher. 



42 MY SUDAN YEAR 

refused. The Fiki then wished to sue the husband 
in the courts, and was somewhat disappointed 
when he was told that if he could write a charm 
which could work such a miracle, there was no 
need for him to have recourse to the courts to 
enforce his debts against the husband." (Report 
of the White Nik Province.) 

And in his Keport of the Haifa Province for 
1910 Captain Bassett, the acting Governor, tells 
the tale of a Kababish woman charged with the 
murder of a fellow-wife by attacking her from 
behind, whilst she was drawing water from the 
river, and drowning her. The evidence, he said, 
was conflicting, and the injured husband did not 
serve to elucidate matters much. Though deeply 
attached to the young and favourite wife who had 
been drowned, he was not anxious for the con- 
viction of the other, his point being that, having 
lost one, he might at all events try to keep the 
other. 

This is comprehensible when one remembers 
that a dowry must be provided for every wife 
taken, not by her father, but by the prospective 
husband. 

The Hadendowa Arabs, who wander about in 



FIAT LUX 43 

the Eastern Sudan and are cattle-owners, have 
blood feuds ; and are apt to resent any inter- 
ference with the old law of an eye for an eye and 
a tooth for a tooth ; and in the Southern Sudan 
the Dinkas, Shilluks, and Nuers make a point of 
killing a man if they suspect him of withholding 
rain for there are professional rainmakers who 
are accredited with powers of drawing showers. 
They also think it right to kill wizards and witches ; 
and to prove whether the accused is guilty, they 
have recourse to trial by ordeal they administer 
poison, or force the suspected person to go into 
the river or pass through fire. If the supposed 
witch or wizard survives the poison, escapes the 
crocodiles, or avoids being badly burnt, he or she 
is proved to be innocent. Another method is 
divination by chickens. A man will even consent 
to the murder of near relatives if he believes that 
they are guilty of witchcraft. After all, we were 
not much better but a few centuries ago in civilised 
England ! 

The inspector has to make it his care to respect 
tribal law as far as he can. In dealing with the 
Dinka tribes, where the tribal code is very elaborate 
and explicit (I shall refer to these later on), for 



44 MY SUDAN YEAR 

instance, the inspector finds a definite system of 
fines upon which he bases his judgments. Many of 
the laws dealing with marriage might serve as 
models in the schemes of European eugenists and 
social reformers. 

The native is ridding himself slowly of the idea 
that justice can be bought. The venal Egyptian 
and Turk, his former masters, accustomed him to 
the bribe, but he is now learning to take his place 
in the courts as an ordinary litigant. Other 
deeply inculcated ideas take some time to root 
out, as that of blood money. For instance, there 
is a Sudan ordinance similar to the English Work- 
men's Compensation Act. This is confounded 
with the more ancient practice in the native mind, 
and in every case of death from injuries, the petition 
presented by the dead man's relatives asks for 
" blood-money." I am informed that it is difficult 
to persuade the relatives that they are entitled to 
nothing unless they can prove their dependency on 
the dead man. They regard the payment as a 
pious offering on the part of the employer, to wipe 
out the stain of blood. 

The Law Courts are situated in Khedive Avenue. 
They are a fine building, its front shaped like a 



FIAT LUX 45 

blunt E. Within are high, cool rooms and many 
corridors. The court-rooms are provided with 
bench, bar and witness-box, as in England, and a 
black usher in uniform. 

Criminal cases are not tried in the Law Courts, 
but in the Police Court. There are two Mohamme- 
dan courts, the Cadi's Court (the Court of First 
Instance), and the Grand Cadi's Court (the Court of 
Appeal). Then come the District Court, presided 
over by a Civil magistrate with jurisdiction up 
to 10 ; and the Civil Court, presided over by the 
Civil Judge the highest court of the First Instance. 
The Civil Court has unlimited jurisdiction. The 
Court of Appeal is at present in the Court of the 
Judicial Commissioner, but it is hoped shortly to 
have a proper Court of Appeal with three judges. 

As I have indicated, Government inspectors 
have the power to judge civil cases ; but civil 
judges go on circuit from time to time in some 
parts of the country. 

The criminal courts are modelled more or less 
on the Indian pattern ; and the more important 
cases are tried by three magistrates on the bench. 
The criminal courts are in the offices of the Governor 
of the Province. 



46 MY SUDAN YEAR 

In Khartoum there are three civil judges and 
one chief judge, one police magistrate and three 
district civil magistrates. The small or district 
court for civil cases under 10 is judged by an 
Egyptian officer. 

There are many picturesque features in the law 
courts, many touches of romance. In the long 
sunny arcade with its chequered shade, as I passed 
down it, sat a little group of Jews, in Biblical dress, 
their long curls descending to their shoulders like 
the Jews of Jerusalem, waiting for their case to 
be called. Muraslas, native messengers in white 
and green, go backwards and forwards with that 
indolent swiftness which is never equivalent to 
European bustling. A colourful element in the 
court-room is the black usher, a tall, powerful 
Sudanese who was formerly the slave of the 
Shenari family of Suakin, once wealthy merchants, 
now fallen on evil days. I was told that the 
faithful ex-servant sends some of his pay to his 
impoverished masters. He was also a soldier, 
and it is said that at the beginning of his regime he 
was discovered drilling the witnesses ! 

There is an interpreter for such cases aa are 
conducted in the vernacular ; many of the magis- 



FIAT LUX 47 

trates, however, understand Arabic so well that 
they scarcely need him. The manner of procedure 
in a civil case is very simple, so that a litigant can 
conduct his case in person : a written petition is 
sent in to the judge by the plaintiff, and if he has 
a legal claim, the petitioner pays the fees. The 
case is then fixed for hearing and tried. 

Civil law in the Sudan is at present a very un- 
certain quantity. Until the commercial conditions 
of the country are better known it will be useless 
to frame codes as has been done in Egypt. From 
time to time ordinances are drafted to meet the 
requirements of civil justice, and no doubt these 
will be consolidated at some future date. But 
the legislator has not kept pace with the com- 
munity. Many important ordinances have not 
yet been drafted, while others have been drafted 
but not passed. These ordinances have to be 
passed in Cairo and Khartoum, and the waste of 
time can only be described as ridiculous, sometimes 
extending to years of red ink and bad temper. It 
is to be hoped that this matter will be taken in 
hand seriously and that some effort will be made 
to meet the needs of the growing commercial 
community. 



48 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The Criminal Code of the Sudan is simply the 
Indian Penal Code, adapted to the country. From 
1909 to 1910 the total number of civil cases for the 
whole Sudan was 8,839, the total convictions in 
the more serious offences tried by Non-Summary 
Courts, 632 ; the death sentence was carried out 
on ten persons. 

There are a few mounted police in Khartoum, all 
educated natives of high intelligence, and quarters 
were erected for them two years ago by prison 
labour. Prison labour is used for strange purposes : 
I remember, when assisting to arrange scenery for 
some open-air theatricals, that a few criminals 
were lent to help us with the more strenuous pieces 
of labour. They proved most polite and in- 
telligent ! I was told that it is found of infinite 
benefit to treat the prisoners humanly as well as 
humanely. They respond to interest like children, 
and show themselves open to reason. There is 
the confirmed criminal in the Sudan as well as in 
England, but only a very small percentage of 
prisoners confined on criminal charges are criminals 
by nature. 



CHAPTEE V 

THE BENDING TWIQ 

li EDUCATION, to be useful to the community, 
"*^ should fit a man for that station of life to 
which it shall please God to call him. It should 
not render him too fine to carry out the work in 
society to which he is by disposition and heredity 
adapted ; on the other hand, it should not deprive 
him, should he show greater capabilities, of the 
opportunity of utilising them for the good of all. 
Above all, it should not rob the land of her heritage 
of labour. 

The education of the black, or rather semi- 
black, man is an important matter. Here is a 
vast territory, as big as Great Britain, Germany, 
Austria, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal put 
together, for the well-being of which England has 
made herself answerable. It will, supposing that 
it develops normally, boast in future years a large 

population. In our hands lies the responsibility 
4 49 



50 MY SUDAN YEAR 

of moulding the unborn race. How are we accept- 
ing it ? 

The raw material is at present the so-called Arab 
tribes and Moslem nondescripts of the Northern 
Provinces, also the Pagans of the South, the Shilluks, 
Dinkas, Nuers, Nubas, Nyam-Nyams and others. 
It is as varied as more varied than the nationali- 
ties of Europe as to race, tongue, custom and re- 
ligion. It comprises the sons of those who fell 
in their thousands at Omdurman, and those black 
tribes who have for centuries provided the slave- 
markets of the world. It comprises the sleek and 
time-serving Berberine and the haughty Baggara 
tribesman. 

Education on such a vast scale could not be 
compulsory. It must be uniform, but it must be 
elastic, so as to adapt itself to the various idiosyn- 
crasies of tribe, race and place. It must be 
religious, to provide an ethical ideal applicable to 
all, but it must not be sectarian or bigoted. 

The system adopted in the Sudan may, I think, 
be said to conform in the main with these require- 
ments. It is my purpose here to survey it as 
briefly as possible, and then to look at the results. 

The simplest form of schooling that a boy can 



THE BENDING TWIG 51 

get in the Sudan is the kuttab, or elementary 
vernacular school. These kuttabs are scattered 
throughout the provinces, but placed only in 
districts which pay an educational rate, or tax, of 
so much on the ardeb.* They are under the direct 
supervision of the local mamur or police official, 
and their administration is modified and adopted 
by the Governor of the Province, through whose 
hands all the correspondence between the head- 
master of a kuttab and the educational centre at 
Gordon College must pass, the master communica- 
ting to the mamur, and the mamur forwarding the 
communication to the Provincial Office through 
the inspector. In the kuttab a pupil learns to 
read and write in Arabic, simple arithmetic, 
geography, the Koran and his duty towards his 
neighbour. Native dress is worn, and school work 
is not allowed to hinder a boy from helping his 
parents in agricultural work at times when he is 
really needed by them. Books and materials are 
provided for the scholars free of charge. Sons of 
those who do not pay rates are charged a fee of 
five piastres a month, that is to say, one shilling 
and a halfpenny. The Gordon College at Khartoum, 

* The unit of measure of dry goods. 



52 MY SUDAN YEAR 

under the directorship of Mr. James Currie, 
is responsible for the syllabus, staff, and actual 
teaching, and educational inspectors are sent 
round from time to time. 

Thus an education of some kind is accessible to 
the bulk of the population of the Sudan, and it is 
an education not calculated to draw them away 
from the cultivation of their crops or care of their 
cattle, but sufficient to make the younger generation 
less fanatical and superstitious than their elders. 
As a rule, when a boy has finished his three years 
at one of these elementary schools, he goes back 
to the land ; but a percentage, a very small 
percentage, is sent on to the primary schools. 

In the primary schools a boy is trained for 
Government employ. He learns advanced re- 
ligious teaching, English, Arabic, a little practical 
carpentry, geometry and land-measuring. At the 
end of a four years' course in the primary school, 
a boy is able to fill adequately a minor official 
post and earn 3 or more a month. Egyptians 
are only eligible for such positions if they are 
domiciled in the Sudan. 

An annual examination is held at the primary 
schools, and from the boys who show special ability 



THE BENDING TWIG 53 

a select number is picked out to go on to the 
secondary school. In 1911 the number of boys at 
the secondary school was 64, of whom 57 were 
Moslems, 7 Copts. The primary schools from 
which these boys had been drafted were those of 
Gordon College (16 boys) ; Omdurman (30) ; 
Wad Medani (5) ; Berber (9) ; Haifa (2) ; and 
Suakin (1), 

There is only one secondary school namely, 
Gordon College. The lads so picked out of the 
primary schools then bifurcate into two sections. 
One section is destined for teaching, the other for 
engineering. The teacher section is taught in 
Arabic, and supplies the teachers for the kuttabs, 
those who do not enter the employ of the Gordon 
College becoming interpreters and clerks. The 
course lasts four years. A boy who enters the 
second section has a five years' course, and when 
it is finished he is drafted into the Public Works, 
Railways, Irrigation or other branches of public 
service. 

All the instruction in this section is given in 
English, as no native instructors and books are 
available. 

The secondary school, excellent as it is, has 



54 MY SUDAN YEAR 

had to confront two undesirable tendencies. The 
teachers of the first section are largely Egyptian, 
and it has been suspected that some of them, 
possessed of Nationalist leanings, may not have 
had an altogether desirable effect upon the minds 
of their pupils. The boys who leave the engineer- 
ing section, on the other hand, sometimes leave 
it " a little too big for their boots/' as one English 
official expressed it to me. These tendencies, 
however, can be safely left to the wise correction 
of Mr. Currie and his staff, who have surmounted 
many worse difficulties in dealing with the problem 
before them. 

Another important section of the Gordon College 
is the Training College of Sheikhs. A sheikh, 
roughly speaking, is a person of standing, so that 
these young sheikhs represent the best Arab blood 
of the country. Here you will find one of the 
Khalifa's sons, a fine intelligent youth, and two of 
the Mahdi's grandsons, each aged about nineteen. 
It is strange to see these youths and their com- 
panions with their turbans, flowing robes, sashes 
and loose-sleeved coats, in such a milieu as the 
Gordon College class-rooms. Their fathers lived 
mostly in the insanitary and fanatical barbarism 



THE BENDING TWIG 55 

of Omdurman in Dervish days. These their sons 
and grandsons live a life which differs little from 
that of an English schoolboy. They have their 
baths, their dormitories, their lockers, their system 
of prefects (the monitor is called alfus), their 
fire-drill, and their football ! They are lovable 
boys, and respond with fire to an appeal to their 
honour or to their affection. An Englishman who 
knew them at close quarters told me that their 
sense of " what was cricket " was as keen as that 
of any average English public school boy. 

The sheikhs pass first through the primary 
schools, like the rest, and at the end of their 
training they are ready to become cadis, ulemas, 
and so on. 

It is not likely, however, that the sons of those 
who galloped to certain death on the slaughter- 
field of Kerreri would devote themselves entirely 
to the arts of peace, or that the sons of the fighting 
blacks could all dedicate themselves to mild 
pursuits. It would be a sheer waste of excellent 
fighting material. There is, therefore, a Military 
School affiliated to the Gordon College, which is a 
sort of Sudanese Sandhurst. The Cadets of the 
Military College receive all their literary training 



56 MY SUDAN YEAR 

in the Gordon College, but drill and learn pro- 
ficiency in all military subjects from their military 
instructors. An English officer is in command of 
the school, an English sergeant is in charge of the 
drill, and the teaching staff was composed in 1911 
of three native officers. The cadets live at the 
military school, and must be under sixteen years 
of age when they enter it. It was my fortune to 
see them both at work and at play. They look 
fine, well-set-up lads in their khaki uniforms ; and 
when a skating rink was opened at Khartoum, the 
cadets took up roller-skating with great zest, en- 
tirely unruffled by falls, their dark mostly black 
faces one perpetual grin of good-nature and 
fun. 

Finally, there is the Technical School at Gordon 
College. In order to enter the industrial work- 
shops it is not necessary for a boy to have passed 
through the primary schools first he can be 
drafted into them straight from the kuttab, and 
usually enters before he is twelve years old. There 
are no fees, and the boy who enters signs a contract 
to stay three years in the school. There are two 
sections the carpenters' and the practical en- 
gineering section. In the workshops the boys 



THE BENDING TWIG 57 

learn fitting, smithwork, machine-running and 
other branches of practical knowledge, and it is 
a pleasure, if one goes over the premises, to see the 
industry and cheerfulness which prevail. The 
boys look very intelligent, and have, as a matter of 
fact, executed most of the work of the new College 
buildings, including the iron railings, the electric 
light fittings, and the furniture. In addition to 
their crafts, the boys in this school learn how to 
write, read and draw, and are instructed in re- 
ligion and the Koran. 

So much for the bare bones of the system. 
How does it work ? 

If one judged only from what one saw at Gordon 
College the answer would be enthusiastic. The 
visitor passes from class-room to class-room ; he 
sees the students at work, the workshops humming 
with activity ; is favourably impressed by the 
gardens, the football grounds (the Gordon College 
boys can play an excellent game and often meet 
our regimental teams), and by the keen interest 
displayed by the staff in their work. If he judged 
only by this, the scheme would appear ideal. But 
no scheme on earth is perfect, and it would be 
idiotic to expect this one to be without blemish. 



58 MY SUDAN YEAR 

One thing must be borne in mind during our 
consideration. It does not matter "tuppence/* 
speaking materially, to the welfare of the Sudan 
whether a man believes the world to be round 
or flat. But what is, and will continue to be, 
important to her for many years, is that he may 
be able to dig. The country is undeveloped for 
lack of labourers, and will be for many years 
to come. 

Now the natural instinct of the native teacher, 
if he takes a pride in his work, is to produce the 
boy with no ambition beyond a Government 
clerkship, the very type of boy who is ornamental, 
inefficient and unnecessary at the present stage 
of national development. This tendency will have 
to be rigorously repressed, and the primary schools 
should only be fed with just as many boys as can 
be trained efficiently for professional and com- 
mercial life, and no more, however intelligent the 
boys in the kuttabs may be. The industrial 
workshops are excellent, but artisans must not 
be produced at the cost of agriculture. It is 
significant and eloquent that the education rate in 
agricultural districts is paid in durra. One cannot 
help wondering if it would not be possible to give 



THE BENDING TWIG 59 

some sort of agricultural education as well, similar 
to the Jewish educational farms and settlements 
in Palestine. Apprentices could be placed in 
such farms under much the same conditions as 
in the industrial workshops. I am more than 
probably asking this out of my ignorance, but in 
any case it is a point which occurs immediately to 
the outside observer. 

In the Annual Report for 1910, published this 
year, I read two remarks which bear directly on 
this question. In his Report of the Berber 
Province, Captain Townsend, Governor of the 
province, writes under the heading of " Educa- 
tion " : 

" Progress continues, but I fear that a number 
of people look on schools as a means of making 
Government look after their children and eventu- 
ally provide them with billets. . . . Under this 
heading it may be stated that the Senior Medical 
Inspector, Atbara, who has kindly furnished me 
with his remarks, states : * Pupils from these 
schools often come for medical examination as to 
fitness for Government employment, and it is 
remarkable what poor physiques most of them 
have. The race does not improve from the 



60 MY SUDAN YEAR 

physical point of view as a result of educa- 
tion/ " 

And Colonel Jackson, Governor of Dongola 
Province, writes : 

" Dongola School is by far the most advanced 
establishment in the province. Last year I recom- 
mended this school for further advancement, 
namely, to that of primary class. Since then, 
however, I have carefully re-studied the question, 
and have arrived at a definite conclusion that such 
a step is undesirable. I therefore now withdraw 
my former recommendation. My reason for this 
decision is that I consider that the education of 
the rural children of the province should be con- 
fined to the teaching of the Koran, reading, writing, 
elementary arithmetic, and geography of Egypt 
and the Sudan. If the children become over- 
educated, by the teaching of foreign languages, 
etc., the result will be that they will refuse to 
return to their former rural life, and will imagine 
that it is the duty of the Government to find them 
employment in its service. I therefore am firmly 
of opinion that province schools should be ' Kuttab 
Schools/ thus leaving primary education to be 
carried out at Khartoum/' 



THE BENDING TWIG 61 

In speaking recently at the opening of the 
railway to El Obeid, Lord Kitchener urged the 
importance of " steadiness " and cautious going 
in our development of the Sudan. The same warn- 
ing may be applied to educative measures. In 
education, as in everything else, it is necessary to 
go slowly above all, with the tribes known as 
the " Pagans " in the South. For education, 
literary education, as a matter of fact, has never 
brought the black happiness, and never will. The 
black races are born to labour ; and, should we 
now attempt to give them a white man's education, 
we should be giving them a curse instead of a 
blessing. 

One other feature of the question must be 
touched upon here the mission schools. The 
State religion of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is 
Moslem ; Government holidays are Fridays (the 
Mohammedan day of rest), Bairam, Courban 
Bairam, and Mouled (the Prophet's Birthday). 
The religion taught in Government schools, there- 
fore, is Mohammedan. Should there be any 
attempt to proselytize to Christianity in such 
institutions as the Gordon College, the result, as 
even the most fervent missionary spirit must 



62 MY SUDAN YEAR 

admit, would be disastrous confusion and ill- 
feeling. For the same reason missionaries are 
forbidden to proselytize in the North, where the 
State religion is professed, while in the South, 
among " Pagans," they are given a free hand. 
But so, also, are the Moslems ; and I have heard 
it said that the Moslems are more successful at 
making converts than the Christians, for the reason 
that the simpler theology and explicit directions 
of the Mohammedan faith are more easily com- 
prehensible to the Pagan brain. 

However, missions are not in any way dis- 
couraged from educational work, and mission 
schools throughout the country have undoubtedly 
been civilising factors. It is sometimes complained 
that when a boy who is a Christian convert enters 
a Government school, he becomes a Moslem, for 
though no pupil's religious belief is interfered 
with, it is only natural that the boy's environment 
and comrades should influence his attitude of 
mind. 

It is indisputable, meanwhile, that men of the 
stamp of the British Missionaries and the Austrian 
Fathers of Lul and Tonga will leave a mark for 
good in the country to which they have devoted 



THE BENDING TWIG 63 

their lives, and incidentally they are doing a great 
service to the sciences of anthropology, folk lore, 
and language, by their study of such peoples as 
the Dinkas, the Shilluks, and the other tribes 
with whom they are in close and intimate contact. 



CHAPTER VI 

" THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 

TT is a boisterous day in spring the warm, 
dry sand and dust are blown into your nose, 
mouth and eyes as you drive along one of the 
windy streets of Khartoum. The telegraph posts 
and flat-roofed drab-coloured houses look more 
than usually unattractive and prosaic in the 
universal dust. The world is brown, sun-baked 
and gritty. 

In front of a building the size of a large parish 
room at home, you stop, and enter. The interior 
is pleasantly cool, and seems dim after the sandy 
glare without. Chairs fill the body of the hall, 
and on a wide platform, in rows upon rows, are 
neat and smiling little girls, dressed in white frocks 
which would remind one of nothing as much as 
little English schoolgirls gathered together for 
Empire Day, if it were not for the complexions 

64 



" THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 65 

above the frocks. There is every shade of skin, 
beginning at olive and shading down through 
cafe au lait to black. But the dimples and bloom 
are there even in the blackest, a bloom which 
lends the complexion the satin surface and texture 
of a ripe plum. Syrian mistresses keep the little 
souls in order. The English sitt who has made 
herself responsible for their good behaviour whis- 
pers an admonition to this wriggling little person, 
a word of encouragement to that shy and solemn 
little person, while she receives her guests. To- 
day, she and her aides-de-camp are receiving the 
fathers and brothers of all this multi-coloured 
feminine humanity, together with some of the 
English residents. The fathers and brothers, wear- 
ing their best tarbushes, their faces cheerful with 
expectation and recognition, sit on one side of the 
hall, the English visitors on the other. It is the 
Ihtifal, the " speech day " of the Girls' School of 
Khartoum. 

There are four girls' schools in the Sudan, and 
of these four, only one, at Rufaa, is a Government 
school ; the other three are mission schools 
one at Omdurman, one at Atbara, and one at 
Khartoum. That of Khartoum is the largest, 
5 



66 MY SUDAN YEAR 

for it numbers close on two hundred pupils. There 
is no distinction of class, race or religion in the 
school, the teaching is non-sectarian, and every 
little girl, whether black, brown or white, is wel- 
comed and instructed in the simplest elements of 
education reading, writing, arithmetic, history, 
and English. English, however, is only taught 
in the upper classes, the majority of children learn 
in the vernacular. 

The programme is a long one, for every child 
who can perform is anxious to show off before 
its proud parents ; and there are recitations in 
English and Arabic, English and Arabic part- 
songs with action, and a dialogue between two 
girls on the benefit of learning, in Arabic. This 
last provokes tremendous applause from the fathers 
and brothers, it is so very " educated " and 
" genteel." There is something inexpressibly comic 
in hearing a small black thing about four or five 
reciting " Twinkle, twinkle, little star," or some 
other English nursery ditty ; and one young re- 
citer is so overcome with shyness that she breaks 
down and has to run away, to be comforted and 
reassured. Learning by heart comes easily, almost 
too easily, to native children. 



" THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 67 

At the end of the proceedings portogan 
(orangeade) and refreshments are served, and the 
gratified fathers and brothers troop out again, to 
tell the mothers and sisters at home how splendidly 
little Fatma or Zia or Nazli has acquitted herself ; 
and the mother, hearing it, thinks what an ex- 
cellent match she will be able to make for her 
daughter later on, when she is of marriageable 
age ; for accomplished young women can look 
high. 

I was told that not all the pupils were children. 
There were three grown-up sittat three married 
women in the school, who came and went in their 
veils. One of these was a young woman whose 
husband was away from her, studying French in 
Paris. She came to the school and said that she 
would like to join the English classes, so that 
she might be able to educate herself in his absence. 
There was something pathetic in this woman's 
striving patiently over the beginnings of English 
with children less than half her age, in order that 
her husband, when he returned, might find that she, 
too, was accomplished in foreign learning. 

As a rule, prospective husbands of the better class 
of Egyptian or Arab prefer a well-educated wife, 



68 MY SUDAN YEAR 

but this is not always the case. The English lady 
in charge of this mission school told me the tale 
of two sisters who once were pupils of hers, and 
it is worth transcribing for the light that it casts 
upon the revengeful pettiness of the Egyptian. 
The girls were partly Circassian, the elder, a more 
than ordinarily pretty girl, being as intelligent as 
she was good-looking. So anxious to learn was 
she that she persuaded her parents to let her stay 
on at the school a whole year after her younger 
sister had left. The younger was a nice girl, but 
fat, placid, and altogether less interesting. Their 
father was very proud of the elder girl's quickness, 
and though he was fond of his younger daughter, 
his affections were chiefly centred upon her sister. 
In due time a young Egyptian officer in a Sudanese 
regiment came to the father and asked the hand 
of the younger daughter. The father agreed, and 
the suitor went away contented. Shortly after- 
wards a wealthy Egyptian merchant also came to 
the father, with the request that he would give 
him his younger daughter in marriage. The 
father answered : "I have just promised her ; 
but there is %iy elder daughter, much the 
prettier ard the more intelligent of the two, 



4 THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 69 

who is still unmarried ; I will give her to you 
instead." 

" No," said the merchant. " I want the younger 
and not the elder." 

The father reflected. It was the wish of his 
heart to see his elder daughter married suitably, 
and the rich merchant was just the match he had 
hoped for her. The suitors' preference for the 
younger daughter could only be whim, for of 
course neither young man had seen the girls. He 
resolved secretly, therefore, to pass the elder off 
as the younger, and replied : 

" It shall be as you wish ; the girl shall be yours." 

Unfortunately, rumours reached the merchant 
that some trickery was intended. He went to 
see the father, and threatened that if he were 
disappointed in the bride he had chosen he would 
make trouble. The father assured his prospective 
son-in-law that his suspicions were false, and that 
he had no intention of deceiving him : meanwhile 
quieting his own uneasiness by telling himself 
that when his best-beloved daughter had shown 
herself to her husband on the wedding night, all 
would be well. 

The two weddings took place : the officer taking 



70 MY SUDAN YEAR 

the younger, whom we will call N ; and the 

merchant the elder daughter, M . When the 

festivities were over and the Egyptian and his 
bride were left alone in the wedding chamber, the 

bridegroom addressed her as N . Tremblingly, 

the young bride confessed that she was M and 

not N . The young husband was furious that 

he had been duped, and resolved to send her home 
to her father after only three days of married 
life the greatest insult that he could offer to his 
wife's family, for it is considered a great disgrace 
if a bride is sent back to her own people. 

The girl is now living with her parents, and has 
small hope of re-marrying, on account of the 
slight that was put upon her. When remonstrated 
with, the merchant retorted that he liked the 
girl well enough, but that he wished to revenge 
himself upon the father for having deceived 
him. 

The lot of a rich man's daughter in Khartoum 
or Omdurman, as a matter of fact, is not nearly 
so happy as that of a poor man's. The wife of 
a rich man must go veiled and seldom goes into 
the street ; a poor one labours, it is true, but 
goes unveiled ; and the blacker she is, the easier 




A FAIR LADY OF OMDURMAN. 



" THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 71 

her modesty, though sometimes one sees a black 
beauty veiled to the eyes, or carrying her tobe in 
her teeth, thus covering the lower part of the face. 
The tobe is the universal garment throughout the 
Sudan ; it is a mere drapery of blue cotton stuff, 
which the Sudani woman throws off with no more 
concern than an Englishwoman throws off an 
opera-cloak in a theatre, and sees no shame in 
leaving the upper part of the body as bare as 
Eve's. I have seen a Sudanese woman stand by 
the river, disrobe, standing only in her rahat or 
fringe and a petticoat wash out her tobe, dry it 
in the sun, and put it on again. The Egyptian 
ladies dress their hair and themselves in a style 
which is more or less European, though out of 
doors they shroud themselves in the habbara. 
The Sudani woman dresses herself as she did in 
the days of the Mahdi, except that in those days 
she was not allowed to wear the beads in which 
her soul delights that is in public, for Mahdism 
was a whited sepulchre, and the forbidden luxuries 
of life were indulged in in secret. But the Sudani 
woman's mode of hairdressing is the thing that 
first impresses the stranger, for it is braided into 
hundreds of rat's-tail plaits all over her head, until 



72 MY SUDAN YEAR 

she looks like an archaic bronze figure ; and for 
hair-oil she uses mutton-fat. 

Morality has never been very high among the 
strange mixture of tribes and peoples that make 
up the population of Omdurman, but however 
easy their morality, these black daughters of Ham 
are capable of wonderful fidelity to those they 
have served. On washing days an old Sudanese 
woman came to the house in which I was staying, 
and with a sans gene which would have easily 
distanced the French washerwoman duchess, she 
laid aside her tobe before she began operations 
and did her morning's work in a state as nearly 
approaching nudity as her conventions allowed 
My hostess told me something of her history. 
Her name was Wasna, and in the Khalifa's time 
she lived in the household of a rich merchant in 
Omdurman who was possessed of several wives. 
But evil days fell upon him, and one by one his 
wives left him. Old and poverty-stricken, he 
would have been entirely forsaken had not Wasna, 
not even a legal wife, but only a slave-woman, 
tended him and kept him in comfort by her toil. 
He was never grateful for her care, but took it 
as a matter of course. One day she came to my 



!'.!TTI.."y t "i .. HI - 



1,1.," z ~ _. !r*n J; 




- - ; - ~ 



X ->-. 



74 MY SUDAN YEAR 

less, or needs help in the household work, she may 
even urge her husband to re-marry. The women 
frequently get attached to each other, and a 
childless wife will be devoted to the children of her 
luckier co-wife. There are cases of jealousy, of 
course, but the proportion of jealous wives is 
not, in my experience, greater in Moslem than in 
European countries. What causes most unhappi- 
ness under the present system is, not polygamy, 
but divorce. If a man is merely dissatisfied with 
his wife, he can, by pronouncing the threefold 
divorce, sever himself from her for ever, nor can 
he marry her again unless she has married some one 
else in the meantime. Sometimes a man who 
has divorced his wife hastily and wishes to re- 
marry her will hire a man to go through the 
ceremony of marriage with her, so that a divorce 
may be again pronounced and the original couple 
be re-united. 

The ease with which divorce is obtained does 
not lead to a higher standard of morality, par- 
ticularly with a quick-tempered, passionate negroid 
race such as the Sudanese. 

Among the better-class Egyptian Arabs in 
Khartoum, it is not uncommon to find a man 



" THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 75 

with one wife only. There are many happy 
families. An English resident, who is looked upon 
with much respect and affection in native Khar- 
toum, told me an anecdote which shows how tact, 
backed up with a piece of illogical argument, will, 
in a native household, mend domestic jars which 
might otherwise have ended in divorce. A certain 
Bimbashi in Khartoum has a very pretty and 
cheerful wife, who has borne him many children. 
The eldest son is at Gordon College ; the mother 
is an intelligent, attractive woman, of whom her 
husband is justly proud. One day this English 
lady, sitting in her verandah, saw the little woman 
coming up the road towards her. Greetings 
passed, and as the Bimbashi's wife still lingered, 
she was invited inside, and accordingly entered the 
house. The English hostess ordered coffee to be 
brought, and then, seeing her visitor was agitated, 
said, " You look distressed ; will you not tell me 
what is the matter ? " 

The Bimbashi's wife politely denied that any- 
thing was wrong, but her agitation rose at the 
sympathetic inquiry. 

" But I can see that you are in trouble," per- 
sisted the Englishwoman, gently. 



76 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The little woman's reserve broke down. " Have 
you room for a Muslim woman in your house ? JJ 
she cried. 

" Beiti beitak (my house is yours)," replied the 
Englishwoman promptly, " but why then ? Has 
your husband gone away ? '' 

" No," said the Bimbashi's wife, " but I have 
left him for ever ! I shall never go back." 

" But why ? " 

A torrent of words was her answer, and the whole 
story came out as they sat over their coffee. As 
far as her English friend could gather from the 
incoherent account, what had happened was that 
the little lady had been washing out her husband's 
socks, and had hung them on the back of a chair 
to dry. They were a new and pretty pair, and the 
eldest son, approving of them, had put them on 
and gone off in them. His father, wanting the 
socks, found that they were missing and, losing 
his temper, abused his wife, accusing her of having 
no control over her children, of being a bad mana- 
geress, of keeping the house ill, and so on. The 
little woman, exasperated, declared she would 
leave the house, and did so. 

The tale was still proceeding, when her listener, 



4 THE SITT OF ALL COLOURS " 77 

from her seat in the verandah, beheld the Bimbashi 
himself coming down the road. She went out. 
He too, was agitated, and in answer to her greeting 
he exclaimed, " My wife has left the house, and I 
am looking for her/' 

The Englishwoman replied, " She is here ; come 
in, and we will talk this matter out/' 

He did so, and there was more excited argu- 
ment. The Bimbashi spoke first, and taking a 
self-righteous tone, said that a woman should be 
a man's under-officer in the house, and should 
preserve perfect discipline in the family. He 
worked himself into a fine state of indignation with 
the rhetorical questions of which the native is so 
fond. " Am I not always a kind husband ? a 
devoted father ? " and so on. 

His wife could not listen in silence, and a dis- 
cussion was in full force, when their eldest daughter 
arrived. Fresh coffee was ordered, and as soon 
as the politenesses had been exchanged, the 
daughter joined in the argument, until it looked 
like being interminable. 

Then the Englishwoman lifted her voice, and said: 

" You have both spoken a great deal, and now 
it is my turn to speak. You, Bimbashi, may 



78 MY SUDAN YEAR 

think your wife all that you have said, but there 
is one thing for which you are very pleased with 
her." 

He looked surprised. 

" Yes, you are pleased that, instead of going to 
the other Muslemin sittat, she came to her English 
friend, who will never breathe a word to any one." 
She turned to the sitt. " And you did very wisely 
in coming to me, instead of causing kalam (talk) 
to be made all over Khartoum. You are pleased 
with your husband that he has not proclaimed 
that you have left him, but has come instead to 
try and find you. Now, my advice to both is this. 
Go quietly back, and tell no one about this mis- 
understanding between you, or great unhappiness 
will ensue, and let everything be as before. Thus 
no one shall know what has happened to-day/' 
They agreed to take her advice. The Bimbashi 
left it is not etiquette for a man to walk out 
with his women and a few minutes later the wife 
and daughter put on their face veils, and went 
peacefully homewards. The next tune the English- 
woman saw them, they were as contented a family 
as before. 



CHAPTER VII 

" GHOSTS " 

day, as I was descending from the steam 
tram in Khartoum, I saw two men talking 
by the roadside. A third approached them, and 
saluting one in the ordinary manner, he lifted the 
hand of the other to his lips and his forehead. 
The man so greeted was an ordinary individual 
enough, of dark complexion and medium height. 
He wore black European dress and a tarbush, like 
any Government clerk, and a gaudy tie. 
' Who is that ? " I asked my companion. 

" That man ? Oh, he is one of the Mahdi's 
sons," was his reply. 

In any other country but the Sudan, it would 
be incredible that an aroma of sainthood could 
cling to the memory of the man who was proved 
over and over again by his false boasts to be a 
charlatan, whose tomb lies in crumbled ruins as 

79 



80 MY SUDAN YEAR 

it was left after Kitchener had turned his guns 
upon it, whose promises have never been fulfilled, 
for whose sake thousands died, and in whose name 
the country from end to end was made desolate 
by war, disease, want and cruelty. If ever there 
was a lost cause, then Mahdism is a lost cause 
to-day. Yet the truth is that the people still 
reverence the Mahdi, think of him as a holy man, 
and venerate his descendants. For no cause, 
however lost, is a forgotten cause in the Sudan if 
it has once rooted itself in popular credulity. 
The Sudanese is religious by nature. Easy to 
move to laughter, sensual, cruel, physically coura- 
geous, he is capable of intense fanaticism. Nor 
does it take much to bring it into being. He is 
simple-minded, easily imposed upon. Individuals, 
deceivers, or more often self-deceivers, constantly 
give themselves out as the Mahdi, or as Christ 
(Saidna Eissa),or as miracle- workers and prophets 
and, however thin and poor their pretensions, they 
are almost certain of a following. Perhaps the 
explanation lies in the fact that to the Sudanese 
there are so many things to wonder at in the 
universe, so many inexplicable mysteries, that few 
marvels appear incredible. He attributes the 



" GHOSTS ' 81 

workings of Nature to the labours of afrits and 
genii. His is the intellect of the child, to whom 
it seems equally credible that steam should move 
trains and faith move mountains. The child 
makes no hard-and-fast line between the natural 
and the supernatural. Neither does the Sudanese. 
Electric light is one miracle ; a Mahdi turning 
bullets into water is another. He is ready to see 
the supernatural in everything. 

For instance, Captain 'Sullivan, Governor of 
the Upper Nile Province, told me of the way in 
which a shrine was evolved in a Dinka village at 
which he was staying. A child a naked, idle 
little brat, in playing, took a piece of white rag 
and stuck it on a stalk of burnt straw, and another 
child did the same. There the fragments fluttered 
in the breeze. Now rags, that is to say pieces 
torn from the garments, are placed on saints' 
tombs when their wearers make a petition ; so 
the next act was that a woman, inspired no doubt 
by the rags, declared that one night she had seen 
a ghostly sheikh there. Soon a mound of stones 
arose, and then a zariba (a defence of thorns) was 
made to protect it, and now it is a holy place, set 
about with many flags. 
6 



82 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Similarly, a tomb near the house in which I 
stayed in Khartoum had evolved in much the 
same way. No one knew its origin, no one could 
tell me who the saint was, or when he died, or 
how long the tomb had been there. Some one 
suggested that there had been an " appearance " 
on the spot. Be that as it may, white flags waved 
along the paling built around it ; petitioners, 
humble people, tied rags to the palisades and 
murmured their requests as they did so ; and an 
earthen jar was set by the tomb and kept full of 
water by the charitable, so that thirsty wayfarers 
might drink at the shrine. It was a " holy place," 
and that was sufficient ; and perhaps the piety of 
these simple devotees had in reality created a 
beneficent atmosphere about the spot : who 
knows ! 

The religious pretensions of a man called Abd- 
el-Kader, and the disturbance caused by them in 
1908 at Kemlin, have been made familiar to those 
in England by the tragic murder of Mr. Scott- 
MoncriefL Vengeance followed swiftly, and Abd- 
el-Kader was taken and hanged ; but there have 
been many other similar affairs, which, had they 
not been put down with promptness, might haye 



" GHOSTS ' : 83 

had more serious results. Abd-el-Kader was a 
holy man and a Mahdist, but others have had 
more ambitious claims. In 1910, at Kitiab in the 
Berber Province, a certain man gave himself out 
to be Sahib el Wakt, or Master of the Times, and 
resisted with violence the police sent to seize him, 
killing the Sheikh of the village who had been 
dispatched as emissary by the Officer of the Police. 
He was put to death. Halley's Comet also pro- 
duced disturbances when it appeared, as it was 
supposed to herald great events in the history of 
Islam. In November the unrest round Singa, 
where the people were talking Mahdism, was so 
grave that a small force was dispatched to quell 
the seditious ; and in Kordofan not long ago a 
certain man gave himself out as Saidna Eissa 
(Christ), and, gathering a following, began to give 
trouble. This too was promptly put an end to, and 
a number of the followers of the so-called Christ 
were killed. 

One reason why these fanatics gain a hearing 
is that they use violence as an argument. The 
Mahdi in the old days converted at the point of 
the sword, and that is a powerful missionary. 
Hence the best method of re-conversion is force, 



84 MY SUDAN YEAR 

and force displayed so quickly that its mere 
exhibition prevents large bloodshed. 

For the ghost of Mahdism is stained hideously 
with blood. The population of the Sudan is, 
even now, after twelve years of peace, not a third 
of what it was before the Dongolawi proclaimed 
himself El Muntazzer The Expected One, the 
Mahdi. To the tourist who comes, shepherded 
by Cook, to scamper through the sights, it seems 
impossible that only fourteen years ago such 
scenes as are described by Father Ohrwalder and 
Sir Rudolph von Slatin Pasha in their wonderful 
narratives of life in Omdurman under the Khalifa 
can have actually taken place. When they see 
the able and energetic Inspector-General for the 
Sudan, the Sirdar's right hand, and one of the 
busiest officials in the country, they wonder if 
it can be true that this man ran barefoot in the 
scorching sand beside the Khalifa's horse, that 
he lived for many years as personal attendant of 
the Khalifa under a regime whose horrors make 
one sicken as one reads about them, that he saw 
fellow European captives die one by one of disease, 
cruelty ^and starvation, and lived himself momen- 
tarily expecting death. Yet it is all true, miracu- 



" GHOSTS " 85 

lous as it may seem. This very man, I was told, 
when he escaped from Omdurman and arrived at 
Assuan, was almost broken-spirited by what he 
had endured. The story was that one night a 
servant at the officers' mess announced that there 
was " wahad " (some one) without. 

" What does he want ? " 

The servant was vague, but said this wahad 
wished to deliver news. 

They had him brought in, and Slatin,in his dervish 
jibbeh, stood before them, a dubious figure dazzled 
by the return to civilisation. The long bondage 
had robbed him of the power to come in un- 
announced to say, " Here I am Slatin ! I've 
escaped." 

But not every man who lived through those 
days is gifted with Sir Eudolph von Slatin Pasha's 
wonderful resiliency and personality. For most 
men, the memory is branded into their souls so 
deeply that a lifetime will not suffice to remove 
the scars. There are Europeans who survived 
that time into whom the iron ate so deeply that 
they can never be the same. The memory of 
the Khalifa's reign of terror is still a living horror 
with them. When Mr. Scott-Moncrieff was killed 



86 MY SUDAN YEAR 

on his fatal visit to Katfia in the Blue Nile Pro- 
vince, which I mentioned just now, one poor 
little lay sister in the Austrian Mission Convent 
was almost beside herself. She was terror-stricken 
lest there should be a revival of what she had 
seen in the days of the Khalifa, and wept and 
would not be comforted. 

Of the sufferings of the nuns of the Mission and 
of Father Ohrwalder's heroic escape, one can read 
in his fascinating book. But he is modest enough 
to suppress much of what he endured. He ex- 
perienced terrible things. When captured in 
Kordofan, he refused again and again to say the 
Moslem creed, and was finally taken off to be 
hanged. He was quite ready to die for his belief. 
At the last moment, a messenger rode up on a 
camel to say that he was not to be killed, as the 
Mahdi thought it would be unlucky to kill a priest. 
The Dongolawi had just remembered the tradition 
in the Hadith that Mohammed, flying one day from 
some pursuers, was sheltered by a Christian priest, 
and thenceforward told his followers never to 
harm one. So Father Ohrwalder was taken back, 
and put in a small straw tukl, where his fanatical 
enemies amused themselves by thrusting their 



" GHOSTS " 87 

spears through the straw and jabbing at the poor 
man with them until his body was covered with 
wounds. He ran round and round the tukl like 
a trapped animal, until, half-crazed with ex- 
haustion and pain, he cried out that he would say 
the creed. He was then forced to marry, and he 
earned himself a frugal living as a braid-maker 
in Omdurman, discovering the way to manufacture 
it, by pulling a piece of braid to pieces and making 
his own loom. Thus he kept himself and other 
captives from starvation. He had several children 
by his Sudanese wife, who are still supported by 
him. On this account, namely that he broke his 
vows, he is not now allowed to celebrate Mass, 
although he is living a life of asceticism again. 
His escape was far more difficult than Father 
Bonomi's, because it was subsequent to it, and 
Father Ohrwalder also helped two nuns to escape 
with him, which greatly increased the danger. 

The Mother Superior of the convent also was 
forced to marry, and was fortunate in marrying a 
Greek. She may be seen any day marketing in 
Omdurman, has several children, and is much 
esteemed by every one. The present Superior 
of the Catholic convent, a successor to Mother 



88 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Francesca, was a nun who, being ill, was sent 
down just before the fall of Khartoum. The 
old lay-sister to whom I referred above was, like 
the rest, forced to marry by the Khalifa. 

The Copts had a very hard time after the fall 
of Khartoum. No one was permitted to smoke 
or drink, and, as they went in fear of their lives, 
they naturally did not transgress this order. But 
sometimes a Moslem who bore a Copt a grudge 
or cast a look of envy on his goods, would come 
in the guise of a friend, and slip a half-smoked 
cigarette under his straw mat. A few hours later 
there would be a pounding at the door, and the 
Khalifa's body-guard, with their quilted helmets, 
would come in and accuse the Copt of being an 
unbeliever and breaking the rules. In vain he 
pattered off the Moslem creed, and declared he 
had no drink or smoke in the house. A search 
was instituted, and in good time the cigarette 
stump was produced triumphantly as a witness 
against him. Then he was haled off, beaten, 
mutilated, or his property seized upon, as the 
caprice of the tyrant might dictate. 

The town of Omdurman itself is in process of 
reconstruction, but the old landmarks of Mahdism 



" GHOSTS " 89 

have not been destroyed, and its ghosts walk 
the streets of the city. 

To begin with, there is the tomb of the Mahdi 
that rubble-heap that could never have been 
anything but a tawdry and insignificant edifice. 
The remains of the Mahdi have disappeared 
the body was burnt and the ashes scattered, and 
the head no one knows definitely where the head 
is, except those who will keep the secret inviolate. 
As it stands, the tomb is nothing but four ruined 
walls, standing open to the heat-blenched sky, 
and within, you pick your way over a heap of 
brown, tumbled masonry. Walk carefully, for 
scorpions have begun to house here. Lizards, 
grey, horny, evil-looking little wretches, whisk 
out of sight as you approach, and a few poor 
weeds, such as attain a yellowed growth beneath 
the fierce and moisture-licking sun, have struck 
root among the rubble. 

Then there is the Beit el Mai, the old stores and 
treasury of the Khalifa, where there is the dusty 
skeleton of Gordon's piano, a pathetic relic, and 
where one can buy Dervish firearms for a few 
piastres. There is the Khalifa's house, no palace 
at best, but comfortable when compared to the 



90 MY SUDAN YEAR 

squalid and miserable huts and tukls which com- 
posed Omdurman in his day. It is built of mud 
bricks like the rest ; the rooms are a little bigger, 
the place is two-storied, and you are shown the 
Khalifa's bathroom with its taps for cold and hot 
water. A poor enough place ; yet a princely 
dwelling in truth for a Baggara tribesman accus- 
tomed to rough living and hard fare. It is in- 
habited now by one or two Englishmen in the 
Government service, who say that the thick mud 
walls keep it very cool in hot weather. There is 
the Mahdi's house, the great praying square, the 
house in which Slatin lived any tourist conducted 
by Cook's guides can see these, and re-people 
them for himself. 

But Omdurman is not only haunted by remi- 
niscences of the dead, it is haunted by the living. 
Yonder goes a man without a foot. You look 
at him more closely and see that for a right hand 
he has only a stump. Both were amputated by 
the command of the Khalifa. There are many so 
mutilated. At the street corner, wrapped in a 
dirty tobe, an apathetic old woman sits with 
drooping head in the blazing sun. Her reason 
has left her; she is dependent upon alms. 



" GHOSTS " 91 

She has neither sons nor kindred all have been 
slaughtered ; she herself was passed in her youth 
from one master to the other. She looks older 
than her years ; her life has been full of so many 
horrors that the marvel is that she is still alive. 
She is not alive, she is one of the living ghosts of 
Omdurman. Thus, in the space of a few yards, 
are two specimens of the wrecks of which the 
city, for all its present prosperity, is full, and must 
be full until another half-century has passed 
away, and time and the English have wrought 
their work. 



OMDURMAN 

TN Omdurman you have as curious an ethno- 
logical jumble as could be desired. There are 
Baggaras, Hadendowas, Jaalis, Shaagis, Ber- 
berines, Dongolawis, Shilluks, Dinkas, Niam-Niams, 
Nubas, Nuers, Abyssinians, Jews, Greeks, and 
mongrels of such complicated lineage that they 
puzzle even themselves. Experts can tell some- 
thing from the racial and tribal characteristics ; 
and there are certain tribal marks three diagonal 
scars on the cheek distinguish the Jaali, three 
horizontal scars the Shaigi, and four scars in a 
square the Dongolawi. But these wasms, or 
tribal marks, are not always to be depended on. 
They are made by cutting into the flesh with some 
sharp instrument, and then rubbing in gun- 
powder. Sudanese belles will decorate their bodies 
in a similar manner. 
Steevens called Omdurman " a rabbit-warren 

92 




A LADY OF SIX FOOT FIVE IN OMDURMAN. 



OMDURMAN 93 

a threadless labyrinth of tiny huts or shelters." 
It remains a rabbit-warren still, though the filth 
and stagnant pools are things of the past, and 
there are neat mud houses and fairly wide streets 
in place of the old maze of rubbish-heaps. But 
few of the houses rise higher than one story ; and 
in the market-place the odd conglomeration of 
booths like hutches, funny little erections of 
matting propped up at the four corners by roughly 
cut trees ; mud shops whose counter is the owner's 
seat, and cramped huts where the artisans sit 
plying their trades on the earthen floor in view of 
the passer by many of these look like the dwellings 
of beavers or conies rather than men. But cleanli- 
ness is now enforced by the British Government. 
In the old days, when a donkey died in the street, 
he was left there until he became bones, and the 
process was not sanitary. Now the owner would 
be fined for such neglect ; and slow camels, their 
humps swaying as they plant their great pads 
forward on their careful way, thread their path 
through the streets and collect the minor rubbish 
from door to door. Yes, Omdurman, slattern as 
she is, is forced to be clean nowadays, and on the 
whole, there is a pleasant scent about the town. 



94 MY SUDAN YEAR 

There is the savoury smell of frying oil and onions 
about the native cook-shops where kebabs are 
roasted in the open air ; there is the wholesome 
fragrance of the grain market, where heaps of 
shining maize, sesame, millet and domestic cereals 
are spread in the sun ; the luxurious odour of the 
gum market, where sweet-scented gums and sandal- 
wood are sold ; and the subtle pleasures of the 
nostril in the quarter of the perfume sellers who 
dispense precious attars and frankincense, myrrh 
and cassia. But, mixed with all, is the pungency 
and unpleasantness of the dust, which is blown 
into your eyes by playful gusts, and finds its way 
into your mouth and into your clothes. It is 
amazing what a desert breeze can do, and how hot 
a wind can be ! 

As I have indicated, all the trades, as in most 
Oriental towns, are separated one from another, 
the jewellers in one souk, the tent-makers in 
another, the weavers of dammur or cotton-cloth 
in another, the grocers in another, and so on, 
through the gamut of merchants and artificers. 
It simplifies shopping, stultifies competition con- 
siderably, and is undoubtedly a good thing, though 
in some cases, as in the butchers' souk, it can be 



OMDURMAN 95 

rather appalling. One butcher's shop is dreadful 
enough : but to have a whole row of butchers in 
huts displaying raw meat and offal is enough to 
sicken the strongest stomach. The most pleasant 
souk of all is perhaps that of the silvei smiths, 
where a gentle tink-a-tink on the small anvil 
tells of the craftsman at his work. Here filigree 
zarfs can be bought, the egg-cup receptacles for 
coffee-cups ; heavy bangles, khalkhals or anklets ; 
elaborate filigree boxes and earrings though the 
work is not so good as it was in the days before 
the Mahdi. Or perhaps the narrow souk of the 
bead-sellers, with its golden shade varied by 
sword-thrusts of fierce white sunlight, is more 
fascinating, where rows of necklaces hang in gaudy 
brightness, beads of amber, coral and silver among 
the rest. Hither come travellers from all parts 
of the Sudan to bargain for trinkets to carry back 
to their womenfolk, and merchants to lay in their 
stock of currency beads according to the fashion 
of the moment ; and long and patient are the 
negotiations, as in all the East. 

Then there are booths where one can buy 
pottery of simple and beautiful shape, hippopota- 
mus hide whips, beaded leather fringes a whole 



96 MY SUDAN YEAR 

and sufficient dress for a Sudanese beauty ; or 
leather Koran cases finely and patiently tooled : 
a hundred temptations for those who have a taste 
for native curios. 

But no one begs from you. Tourists fresh 
from Egypt, accustomed to hear the very stones 
cry out " Bakshish ! " cannot marvel enough over 
this strange stillness. Smiles they get in plenty 
from the good-tempered black faces around them, 
but the beggarly whining and obsequiousness that 
make progress through a bazaar in an Egyptian 
town so painful are nowhere apparent, and one 
thanks Heaven and the Sudan Government for 
it with great sincerity. 

To-day, in spite of the fact that there is hardly 
an inhabitant of Omdurman who could not tell 
you of some horrible thing, either endured or 
committed by him and his in the past reign of 
terror, there is a general air of prosperity and 
cheerfulness about Omdurman. Doubtless, were 
a general licence once again extended to cruelty 
and rapine, the very black innocent who grins 
so ingenuously and kindly would straightway turn 
into a fiend in human shape but in restraint he 
wins your affection. 



OMDURMAN 97 

The natives must be prosperous in Omdurman, 
for even a working man will pay a preposterous 
price for his wife. The cost of getting married 
has gone up since the days of the Mahdi. The 
Mohammedan custom at marriage is that a certain 
sum is agreed upon as the bride's dowry, and is 
provided, not by her father, but by the prospective 
bridegroom. Half of this is handed over to her 
people before marriage, and is usually spent in 
wedding festivities, the other half can be claimed 
by the wife if her husband divorces her. In the 
times before the Mahdi, owing to the extravagance 
with which bridal rejoicings were carried out, 
and the heavy sums demanded as dowries by the 
fathers of marriageable maidens, the very poor 
found it difficult to marry. The Mahdi promptly 
ordered that the dowry should be fixed at one 
pound for a virgin, and ten shillings for a woman 
who had been divorced ; so that, although marriage 
was a more expensive commodity in the Sudan 
than in Great Britain, it was not impossible. But 
now a bitter complaint is being made that the 
price is getting high again. A well-to-do labouring 
man may have to pay as much as 15 to 30 for 

a bride. This does not apply to the southern 

7 



98 MY SUDAN YEAR 

provinces. A friend of mine possessed a Dinka 
servant. One morning the man left and did not 
come back till the next day. She sent for him 
and remonstrated with him. He explained that 
he had been obliged to go to Omdurman, where his 
mother and wife lived, in order to enforce peace. 
His wife apparently had refused to cook, and 
needed to be brought to order by means of the 
stick. " It is very sad for me," he explained, 
" because she was not a cheap wife. She cost 
me five pounds ! " 

So much for a passer-by's impressions of the 
city of Omdurman, a strange mixture of ruin and 
squalor on the one hand, and prosperity and 
commerce on the other. The new city is rising 
Phoenix-like from the ashes of the Dervish strong- 
hold. Without exaggeration, it may be said that 
he who goes to Omdurman with open eyes will 
see the whole work of the English in the Sudan 
epitomised, for in those few square miles on the 
west bank of the Nile he has a visible commentary 
on the past and future of the country. 



CHAPTER IX 

SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 

ri THE Sudanese is a rhymester rather than a 
poet. He makes rhymes and rhythms on 
every possible occasion, but, like all of Arab blood 
or partly Arab blood, he is seldom capable of 
producing lofty lyrical poetry. The boatmen, aa 
they tug together at a rope, or pull their oars 
through the water, make chanteys, but these are 
rarely imaginative or poetical in the Western sense 
of the words. The highest flight of their genius 
carries them no further than the time-honoured 
comparison of a lovely maiden's face to the full 
moon, or the platitudes which liken her carriage 
to that of the gazelle. Maj noun-like, the poet 
bewails the absence of the loved one in terms of 
distraction, but there is rarely a simple and lovely 
phrase to tell of love in its higher form or grief 
in its more poignant degree. The Arab seldom 

99 



100 MY SUDAN YEAR 

personifies Nature, or chants of the beauties of 
dawn, of the skies of sunset, or of green places 
like most children of Nature, he is too close to 
her, too dependent upon her for his physical needs, 
to sing of her. House-dwellers can sing of the 
delights of the open air, but it would not enter the 
brain of a gypsy to do so, though he would fret 
beneath a roof. Similarly, the Arab times his 
night-watches by the stars, travels by them for 
lack of a compass, knows their positions and their 
names but writes no lyrics to them. Love and 
religion move him to song first and foremost, then 
come songs relating to expeditions, to comforts, 
to the deeds of such-and-such a one, or mere 
chanteys and refrains. These chanteys are more 
often impromptu. If you listen to the boatmen, 
you will find that one will invent rhythmic lines, 
to which the others chant a refrain in chorus. 
Such lines may be prompted by the work in hand, 
by a person present, or by any event that is taking 
place or has just taken place. A Government 
inspector has often to listen to his praises in one 
of these impromptu chants, and sometimes they 
are used to taunt or chaff the person against whom 
they are directed. A certain English official had 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 101 

occasion to flog a Berberine for some misdemeanour; 
and the culprit, instead of bearing the punishment 
without a cry, for most Sudanese take a pride 
in enduring pain without flinching, wept and 
shrieked, " I cannot bear it, effendim ! " The 
other natives, who were Jaalin, were so disgusted 
at his cowardice and the disgrace that he was 
bringing on his tribe, that they crowded around 
to jeer at him, and begged that he might be flogged 
harder. After that day they made a song of many 
verses about the incident, with " I cannot bear it, 
effendim I " as a refrain. The Berberine, unable to 
endure the chaff, went privately to the composer 
of the song and offered him some money if he 
would abstain from singing it. His tormentor 
pocketed the money and promised to comply ; and 
the song was stopped, but was succeeded by 
another in which, to the unfortunate Berberine 's 
further horror, the poet ironically celebrated the 
way in which the coward had bribed him to cover 
his shame ! 

It is a pity that a serious collection is not made 
of the folk-lore and songs of the Sudan. One 
English official furnished me with some rough 
translations of poems taken down by him, and 



102 MY SUDAN YEAR 

from these I have selected a few representative 
songs, and one or two interesting for topical 
reasons. Of such topical interest, for example, is 
the hymn of Abd el Kader Wad el Habuba, the 
fanatic responsible for the murder of Mr. Scott- 
Moncrieff. As I mentioned in a former chapter, 
this religious ruffian was eventually caught and 
hanged. 

THE HYMN OP ABD EL KADER WAD EL 

HABUBA 

Lords of the host of Heaven, Hassan and Hussein, 
With our Lord Abbas, of the faith supporters firm, 
And I glorify my God my establisher, 
He Who forgiveth our iniquities. 

My desire of God is that I may be improved, 

Of Him I beg that all infidels may perish 

'Neath the Moslem's feet. The Prophet with kohl-stained * eyes 

And separated teeth, of stature medium ; 

He who pardons, and is unsurpassed, walks humbly : 

He is gentle and most merciful. My people, 

Lo, I have found his footprints ! Be ye strong, be bold ! 

Now is the time for deeds for the naked sword. 

The poor rejoice and the prosperous are ashamed, 
Struck dumb with dismay at news of our uprising. 
Five years have I conceived and pondered my design 
Unmindful of the world for 'stablishing the faith. 

* The custom of beautifying the eyes with antimony or kohl is 
much in use among the Arabs. Mohammed is supposed to have 
had a separation between the two front upper teeth, and this is 
supposed to be lucky. 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 103 

The Prophet, from his birth of thoughtful mind and mien, 

Of spotless purity and fertile in resource ! 

Should I be in distress, Messiah to my aid 

Sends Henein, Uhud, Badr, Khandag and Tebuk. 



The friends of our Mahdi, the Prophets following, 

The band of the twelve hundred hastens to our aid. 

I put my trust in God, and will not hesitate 

Wherever it may lead from following my fate. 

Fear is calamitous and a dread ill as well 

That casts its victims out of Heaven into Hell. 



Our race is nigh extinct. You ask if this is so ? 
Seek, examine its state : return to me, then go 
Shout aloud the Word.* At best you are called a fool ! 
That without love your nearest comes not, is the rule. 

God will destroy His foes with strength of sword and spear, 
But that which is ordained happens. I will not fear. 
Fear is the final ill, casting the mortal down 
Into abysmal Hell from Heaven's crown. 



Some of the lines are obscure, and have been 
rendered literally. Of the same order of poem is 
one addressed to Ali Dinar, the Sultan of Darfur. 
As a piece of fulsome flattery it is not without 
humour, for Ali Dinar is a negro tyrant of the 
first water. (See Chapter XVIII). 

* There is no god but God, and Mahomnied is His Apostle, 



104 MY SUDAN YEAR 



The Sultan acts according to Law and Justice ; 
He requiteth all service, like to the lightning. 
Aflame in dark heavens his great worth have I seen, 
Mine own eyes have seen him seek out the oppressed. 

Just Sultan, your land is the fugitive's refuge ! 

High and unblemished is the pride of your lineage ; 

Far and wide is your excellence famed throughout the world, 

In Syria, Yemen, in Taifhar and Kufa. 

The Sultan is just ; by God is his strength increased ; 
The reed-pipes go before, the rifles are aligned ; * 
The light of God shines forth the Sultan's path to guide, 
He who doeth wrong is instantly put to death. 



A characteristic feature of these poems is the 
introduction of a line used as a refrain without 
much relation to the sense of the text. As in the 
following .': 

THE SECRET LOVERS 

When the tale of our passions spread abroad 

(Sweet-smelling oil of cloves !) 
Little recked I of the shame of it all 

The scandal of our loves. 
I went to the man who held me in thrall. 

* AH Dinar has a personal following of about 5,000 men, and a 
standing army. 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 105 

Few of the love poems are simple, but those 
that are simple are the best. The following love 
poem pleased me on account of its naivete. The 
girl is supposed to be singing in the first part ; her 
lover reassures her in the last lines. 

LOVE SONG 

O bring me to his fragrant presence, 
For the breeze at early morning wafts 
Me-ward sweet memories of my love : 
My head droops, tears fall upon my breast. 

The chatter and the petty gossip 
Oppress my mind, but pass unrecked of. 
He is tall and dark of colour. I 
Am his alone, in spite of kindred. 

Will the great folks' anger never cease ? 

My beloved is tall ; his voice is sweet ! 
Eastern lightning, bidding the sleepers waken, 
Let night be shield, and away we will flee 
If God will ! to Whom I make my plea. 

They say I'm poor. ' My love's content,' I answer. 
So I am his, we might sell wood together. 
Let him be harsh, ill-treat me or abuse me ! 
Am I the only village girl affected ? 

*7er Lover : 

O Daughter of the Great ! dear thou art to me ! 
Little one ! None shall ever share thee with me ! 
And this is indeed the truth ; I love but thee. 



106 MY SUDAN YEAR 

In contrast to this, here is a poem full of more 
stereotyped phrases. It is confused for Western 
minds by the abrupt interpolations which seem 
to break the sense. 

TO HIS MISTRESS 

A camel of the Bisharin,* abroad with head-rope loosened ; 
Ever with sad, reproachful mien I listen for her calling, 
Nor after shall she show resentment pleasure brings peace! 

No slim gazelle can outvie the grace of her supple movement. 
By my life, O Sekina,f say why am I thus in bondage ? 
(The while the light gazelle has flown from the quarter of Umrein, 
And with anxious care his mother tends and watches his desire, 
A pasture green watered anew by the tears of the watcher.) 

For oh, the desire to be with her ! the summons of friendship, 
'Midst the jealous lies of detractors, happy the glamour of youth. 

thou, my beloved gazelle, wandering in the valley ! 

traveller to Dueim.J see, there is my beloved ! 

Your dwelling, O my Temanin, is distant peace be upon you, 

On your smooth soft hair and shining teeth, blue lips|| and gentle 

speech, 

Your well-turned neck, erect upon beautiful firm round shoulders, 
Your gestures of regal fire and cushioned softness of bosom ! 
You wander afield, all unheeding the cry of your lovers, 
High above the great ones, in your hands all gladness and pleasure. 

* A nomad tribe. f A numerical designation. 

t El Dueim, a town below Khartoum on the White Nile. 

Temanin, lit. Eighty. Every letter has a numerical equivalent 
in Arabic ; hence Eighty may mean Fatma, as the letters when 
added give 80. 

I) Sudanese girls tattoo their lips blue. 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 107 

Pure and high is her lineage, her graces baffle description, 
Great the charm of her discourse, her scent than the gasis * sweeter, 
As Mecca to the pilgrim is the healing of her glances, 
Precious as corn in a famine year death better than parting with 

her ; 

Fair as the garden of El Nur,f free as the Ansar of Firka ; J 
Like silk to the touch is her skin, fragrant the balm of her breath ; 
Long-stemmed and flower-tipped as the herbage down by the river. 
A gazelle roaming free in the desert. Who could replace her ? 
Her house is in Faj el Madudi, where gentle breezes play. 
A necklace beyond compare strung with jewels that none can buy. 
Armed the strength of her escort, in bright gold are his wages paid. 
Queen of my slumbers ! daintily-clad, breath-giving Elixir ! 
The shady tree of Abd-el-Aziz before the tarifa, 
As a branch peeled smooth and straight are the flowing lines of 

her form ; 

Beautiful is my love, nor unreasonable, nor wayward, 
Kind and modest in manner. How complete her description ? 
Slender her grace of neck, on the curving line of her shoulders, 
Her skin has the sheen of gold, as the moon in heaven her face. 
O wide soft eyes of the gazelle, wandering in the desert ! 

This kind of rhapsody is capable of being pro- 
longed indefinitely, and is sung to a monotonous 
chant accompanied by the daraboukeh. With 

* A foreign perfume sold in Omdurman. It is called gasis 
(priest) because there is a picture of a Greek priest on the bottle. 

f Formerly a garden in Khartoum made by El Nur el Khabir, 
a wealthy native. 

J The Baggara horsemen of the Khalifa were known as Ansar 
or helpers. Firka is about a day north of Dongola. One of the 
most successful Dervish battles was fought here, and the Ansar 
brought back much loot from it. 



108 MY SUDAN YEAR 

regard to the Elixir of the poem, the actual Arabic 
is Al Aksir, referring to a fabulous tree, which 
had the power of turning objects brought into 
contact with it into gold. Such a tree is supposed 
to grow in the Sudan. Seventy years ago a great 
religious Sheikh named Seyyid el Hassan el Morghani 
lived in Kassala. A certain man came to him, 
declaring that he had found the tree and had 
taken a branch of it. The Sheikh asked him to 
bring the branch, and when it was brought he 
destroyed it, lest its magical properties should 
cause dissension and strife. The man sought the 
tree for the second time, and brought back a 
branch, but the Sheikh becoming magically aware 
of it, found the branch and threw it away also, 
fearing that the possession of gold would work 
the rum of the tribe. Then the man took a friend 
and went off for the third time, resolved to get 
possession of a branch for himself. But on this 
occasion, though they searched everywhere, they 
could not find the tree. There is also a story that 
an Italian, travelling in Kordofan, heard of the 
existence of the tree in the neighbourhood. When 
he went to look at the spot, he found that it was 
growing on an inaccessible rock. He contrived 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 109 

to form a pulley, and let a man down, but the 
story has it that the rope broke and the man was 
badly injured.* 

A more sincere poem is one I have named " Boy's 
Love." 

To-night is my soul possessed, by love I am overpowered, 
Sometimes with quick stab of steel, sometimes with blister of flame. 
The seed that was sown in my heart has quickened and flowered ; 
A lover's strength yearns to his love, shall not mine do the same ? 

Should I visit her by day, fear of scandal is her whim ; 
If I go to her by night, but for slumber does she care. 
Can I divine her wishes ? Can a man the ocean swim ? 
O true wives, live loving women, ye are rare, ye are rare ! 

From a child none e'er made me carry water from the well ; 
A boy, I wore maidens' rings in the Mangala fashion f : 
She parts the curtains ; beckons me ; my heart begins to swell ! 
She thinks I am still a child, not knowing love or passion. 

* Cf. R. F. Burton, 491st Night, Adventures of Bulukiya. " There- 
in were marvellous trees whose like he had never seen in his wander- 
ings, for their blossoms were in hue like as gold. He landed and 
walked about for diversion until it was nightfall, when the flowers 
began to shine through the gloom like stars. Seeing this sight, he 
marvelled and said, ' Assuredly the flowers of this land are of 
those which wither under the sun and fall to earth, where the winds 
smite them, and they gather under the rocks and become alixir, 
which the people collect and thereof make gold.' " Al Iksir means 
an essence, also the Philosopher's Stone. 

t Rings in the Mongalla fashion, i.e. at the top of the ear. 



110 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The next song is a pastoral. One can almost 
hear the lowing of the herds as one reads it. 

To-night the thunder in the South has possessed me, 

With keen remembrance of my dear trusting love. 

When night grows chill I hold her clasped against my breast ; 

wretched one ! Who can aid, save God above ! 

To-night the South has loosed the fleecy clouds aloft, 
Recalling my kindred, distant, far apart, 
Small and white are their teeth, their skins are fair and soft, 
The Lord is come, and the lover must depart. 

The vision of the South conjures before my eyes 

The mountains where safe from ill the young sheep rove, 

A striped-necked lamb for milk unto its mother hies, 

1 have none save you ! But one glance craves my love. 

All day and through the night I must my vigil keep, 
Still my aching heart nor rest nor solace finds ; 
Watching the grazing flocks, my cattle and my sheep, 
How can we express the torment of our minds ? 

The day has heard my songs, all night awake I've lain, 
Friendless and alone I pass along my way. 

In the dawn I found her, and sought to ease my pain. 
Spurning my embrace, fearful she turned away.* 

A more virile note is sounded in the camel songs. 
Here are three of them. 

* Literally, " When with her she said ' Consider that I belong 
to a relative ' " when tribal custom would not permit him to 
touch her. 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 111 

i 

How often on a well-fed camel of my own 
Gaily I have ridden bearing my keen sword ! 
My house is from the houses of my brothers known, 
Food for guests is ever ready at my board. 

II 

A camel easily to ride, 

A maiden to my breast to strain, 

Luscious meat with *' basal " * fried, 

Or herding camels in the plain ; 

Tell me, you who have made the test, 

Which of these pleasures is the best ? 

We who have tried them all can say 
Herd camels, on a cloudy day 
When elder ones the darkness fear 
And slow towards the young ones move, 
And you the camel music hear, 
Than this there is no better love ! 

Ill 

Camels with thick-furred necks oft have I ridden 
Over country where wild beasts dare not remain ; 
Never by a comrade have I yet been chidden ; 
Nor, may I lose my speech ! treated with disdain. 
Camels with clean fore-feet, legs of proportion rare, 
Rough desert country where lions terrify. 
No one of my comrades will brave the risks I dare ! 
Should I bow to scorn ? Let who will reply. 

" The Song of Abu Surhan " contains allusions 
difficult to understand, but they were probably 

* Onion. 



112 MY SUDAN YEAR 

full of sly innuendo at the time the song was com- 
posed. Abu Surhan was the Sheikh of all the 
Abadi Arabs north of Assuan. He had a son 
called Hassan, and was sent by the Khalifa to 
Redjaf to get slaves. He was a powerful Sheikh, 
and it was thought that the Khalifa was not 
altogether pleased with him. Be that as it may, 
he did not return until Omdurman had been taken 
and the Khalifa had fallen. Ten days after his 
arrival he was killed by one of his tribe. 

THE SONG OF ABU SURHAN 

They saddle his camel with a kur ; * 
Abu Surhan is clothed in dammur.f 
Nor drinks merissa nor eats cooked foods, 
For the pride of Jeddah merchants' goods J 
Has fled, and the house in ruins fell, 
While the world seems overturned as well. 

Abu Surhan's tarbush is awry, 

His temper is vile, nor brooks reply ; 

He lights candles, at the outer gate 

He spreads out mats for his guests to wait. 

They saddled a camel thick of neck, 
For to Darfur he is off on trek, 
Seeking no Dar Fertitawi slaves, 
But the coal-black Ab Turruma braves. 

* Native saddle. f Cotton cloth. J I.e. his slave or wife. 
Fertitaw. The natives of Western Kordofan and the Bahr- 
el-Ghazal. 



SUDANESE SONGS AND SINGERS 113 

From the saddle pendant tassels stray, 
To his blameless love he wends his way. 
Nor 'tis mere gossip that I'm giving 
That in Es Saier * he's now living ! 

A poet responsible for many of the songs that 
live on the lips of the people is Hardallu of the 
Aulad Abu Sin in Kassala. He is of the Shukria 
tribe, formerly very powerful, as its territory 
extended into Abyssinia. The head of the family 
is Abdullah Abu Sin, to-day a comparatively poor 
man, and its leading members now live between 
the Atbara and the Blue Nile. Two of his songs 

run as follows : 

I 

How often have I swaggered in 

The famous mart of Abu Sin ; 

Many the camel I have tired, 

By thought of necklaced beauty fired ! 

My back's now bent and I am " broke," 

Picked clean as any camel's knee. 

I needs must ride upon a moke, 

Nor does e'en that belong to me. 

II 

bird on the wing, bear my greetings to Umara ; f 

Tell him that our land is now ruled by the Baggara, 

The sweet-scented maiden who 'neath curtains spent her days 

Has been plucked from their shelter and walks the scorched ways. 

* Es Saier was the name of the slave whom the Khalifa made 
the governor of the prison in Omdurman. The prison became 
known as Es Saier after this man, whose cruelties were notorious. 

| Neufeld and many others were imprisoned there. 

8 



114 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Aa the prey of El Hurrani,* fearful you elope, 
Your wealth of hair flows loose o'er the shoulders' downward slope ; 
When banished from her sight, from my work all virtue slips. 
O the joy of her speech, and the moisture of her lips ! 

I will end the selection by two songs. One is 
a ditty that may be heard any day in Omdurman 
as the women bend to rub their durra between 
the grinding stones. It is also interesting as 
containing several Nuba words. The other is an 
ironical complaint from a young man gone to 
seek his fortune in order to pay the necessary 
dowry for his bride. 

THE SONG OF THE FIRST WIFE 

O thou Moon, do not set ; 
Let me see my belov'd, 
Who left me at sunset 
In charge of my kindred. 

O thou Moon, remain clear ; 

My country is distant, 

And my man has left me, 

And gone to his own love (i.e. his countrywoman). 

WHAT THE LOVE OF WOMEN IS 

A man left his betrothed and went on a journey, 
singing : 

" My mother cries, ' Lord, Who knowest my state ! ' 
My aunt declaims, ' thou Re-Uniter of People ! ' 
My sister sobs, ' Alas ! My brother and my dear ! ' 
But my betrothed says, ' He's gone to get me money ! ' " 

* A famous hunter. 



CHAPTER X 

TO THE SUDD AND BACK 

T N the Sudan a great deal is heard about " sud- 
dite." What is it ? and why is the question 
an important one ? 

" Sudd " or " sadd " means literally " obstruc- 
tion," and in the Sudan it is generally applied to 
the river- weed which, massing itself together in 
the Upper Nile, forms a vast expanse of swamp, 
a veritable inland Sargasso Sea, a waving, 
lush-green forest of reeds and water growth some 
thirty-five thousand square miles in extent. Think 
of it ! Thirty-five thousand square miles of hope- 
less swamp. Through this sudd region the White 
Nile travels for three hundred miles, and in the 
rainy season large islands of " sudd " break away, 
and, floating down stream, choke up the narrow 
channel of the river. So serious does this ob- 
struction become, that river steamers have been 

115 



116 MY SUDAN YEAR 

blocked in for weeks at a time, until a way has been 
hewn out for them. To lie stagnant in a tempera- 
ture resembling the hottest room in the Savoy 
Baths, surrounded by a flat eternity of swamp 
swarming with crocodiles and murderous with 
mosquitoes ; to be running short of food ; and to 
swelter by day at the slow task of cutting a way 
through, is a form of torture sufficient to turn the 
brain. This sluggish octopus, the sudd, could do 
this. It sucked the blood of its victims with its 
standing army of millions of mosquitoes ; it drove 
them crazy by its eternal monotony; it put its 
green tentacles around them and held them fast. 
The sudd is the slow monster that strangles the 
river, that blocks the highway, that drinks the 
water that should irrigate the thirsty land. There 
is a brave force of engineers constantly attacking 
it, and so successfully that, owing to their efforts, 
the waterways are rarely blocked as hopelessly 
as of yore. A fleet of dredgers is always at work. 
Here for nine months out of the twelve they stay 
in this abomination of desolation, these English 
engineers, year in, year out ; only seeing a white 
face from time to time, at grips with the octopus, 
patient and enduring, scientific and persevering. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 117 

Men like these, though no one ever hears of them, 
make one proud of the race. 

But recently a new aspect has been given to the 
sudd. Up to the present it has been wholly 
malignant. It is now possible that a service may 
be wrung from it. A certain German diplomatist, 
Herr von Eath, was the inspired originator of the 
idea. The steamers that go up from Khartoum 
to Gondokor and the Lado and back cannot use 
coal, for the price of transport renders the expense 
prohibitive. Hence, at the fuelling stations placed 
at intervals along the White Nile, you will see 
neatly piled stacks of wood placed on the bank, 
and this " wooding " is a process to which you 
will soon get accustomed if you journey south- 
wards. It is full of disadvantages ; indeed, it is 
chiefly disadvantages. Wood-fuel takes a long 
time to get on board ; it occupies a great deal of 
space when it is on board, and it eats up the 
timber of the country. Now, it occurred to this 
Teutonic genius that, could the mass of weed be 
dried and prepared for the burning, the sudd, 
which was useless, might just as well provide the 
fuel instead of the trees, which were useful ; accord- 
ingly, with the grateful approval of the Sudan 



118 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Government, experiments were duly carried out. 
Some tons of the tall weeds were cut down, dried 
in the sun, subjected to a disintegrating process, 
and converted into neat briquettes about six 
inches long, three broad, and one deep ; the 
handiest little objects imaginable. The heating 
qualities of this " suddite," as it was christened, 
are, according to its inventors, nearly two-thirds 
that of coal, while the briquettes themselves have 
a density of four-fifths of coal. 

Hence a company was formed, with the result 
that I quote in extenso from that well-informed 
little paper " The Near East." 

"As a result of the experiments which have 
been carried on in Europe and the Sudan during 
the last three or four years, and also the satisfactory 
manner in which the fuel has emerged from the 
various trials to which it has been subjected, the 
Sudan Government have, we understand, defi- 
nitely granted a valuable concession, conferring a 
monopoly for the manufacture of solid fuel from 
sudd, for a period of seventeen years. Under the 
terms of the concession, the Government are to 
receive 10 per cent, rebate on all fuel supplied 
at the price charged to the public consumers. 
The Government are further to receive a deacl 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 119 

rent of 250 per annum, or a commission of 5 per 
cent, on the net profits of the company, whichever 
shall be the greater. The Government have 
allocated to the concessionaires the first 150 
kilometres of the Bahr-el-Gebel, starting from 
Lake No, in which they are to have the sole right 
of cutting papyrus, um-soof, and other aquatic 
growth constituting what is commonly known as 
sudd. The Government further give a site of 
25 feddans of land for the purpose of erecting 
a factory, etc., in any place which maybe selected 
by the concessionaires, where such land may be 
available. The concession provides that the con- 
cessionaires shall supply the needs of the Govern- 
ment services in preference to private consumers, 
and stipulates for a minimum output of double 
that amount." 

It was upon a steamer specially chartered by 
this company for the purpose of choosing a site 
for the factory, that I went in 1911 as a passenger. 

In the manufacture of suddite I had no imme- 
diate interest, but the expedition was to take a 
route different to that of the ordinary Govern- 
ment steamers, and I was curious to see that 
floating uninhabitable wilderness of weeds beyond 
Lake No, to go down the Bahr-el-Ghazal usually 



120 MY SUDAN YEAR 

forbidden to tourists, and to see a little of wild 
Africa, for of this the civilisation of the Northern 
Sudan could tell me nothing. 



Perhaps the best manner of describing that 
journey to the sudd is to give it almost as it stands 
in my diary. If there are trivialities recorded, I 
must beg forgiveness. I fancy that trivialities 
will convey as much of the atmosphere of a place 
as a series of facts, sometimes ; and this book 
does not aim at conveying facts as much as im- 
pressions. 

The steamer chosen for the expedition was the 
Cephcdonia, and she lay just below the high 
river bank in the Blue Nile, by the garden of the 
Slavery Department, which happens to be one of 
the best gardens of Khartoum. The Department 
concerns itself, not with providing labour, but 
with stopping the slave-traffic. The Cephalonia 
was herself scarcely more than a glorified nugger, 
with a wheel-box astern ; and, like all the up- 
stream vessels, she was attended by two satellites, 
one on either side flat-bottomed nuggers, or 
native boats. To get on board it was necessary 
first to thread one's way through a group of donkeys 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 121 

and camels under the lebbakh trees above ; then 
to descend the perilously steep bank ; then to 
cross by a plank to the attendant nugger ; to 
pick one's footsteps through bales, a menagerie of 
animals, sleeping men, wood, saddles, and every 
imaginable utensil, till one arrived at the Cepha- 
lonia herself. The other nugger, reached acro- 
batically from the steamer, was a comfortable 
barge-like structure of considerable age, judging 
from the way that she crumbled under a shock. 
She contained supplementary sleeping accommoda- 
tion and an upper deck. She had pretensions to 
respectability, a semi-genteel look, as it were. 
The first nugger, on the other hand, was a mere 
maid-of-all-work, a slatternly Martha, dedicated 
to the humbler uses. The broad bosom of her 
deck accommodated seven sheep, two donkeys, 
a cage full of pigeons, three Sudani women and 
about ten men, in addition to which wood fuel 
was added later on, to the discomfort of the 
unfortunate animals. I felt sincerely sorry for 
the menagerie. There they stood, day by day, 
hardly moving, their heads dejectedly drooped in 
the burning sun, for there was no merciful shade 
for them. It was sad, too, to see the number of 



122 MY SUDAN YEAR 

sheep gradually diminishing, as one by one they 
were dedicated to the knife or the cook. When 
we returned to Khartoum at the end of our trip, 
one solitary sheep was left, gazing at the skin of 
the last-sacrificed brother. 

The two younger women, comely Sudani girls, 
and the older woman, discarded their blue tobes 
as soon as we had left Khartoum well behind us, 
and kept only the scantiest of draperies about 
their hips. Their skins were black and shining 
I often admired the bare back of one girl as she 
bent over her cooking ; it might have served as 
a model for a sculptor. Their hair was braided 
in the orthodox manner into hundreds of little 
plaits, only a few hairs going to each plait, and the 
whole plenteously besmeared with grease. 

We left Khartoum in a fresh breeze, for it was 
a cool winter day, the thermometer on deck stand- 
ing at 86 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Past 
Tuti Island we went on the down stream, and at 
three o'clock rounded Moghren Point, where one 
can still see a mass of masonry, the unfinished 
beginnings of a palace projected by a former 
Egyptian Governor-General at the meeting of the 
two Niles. The encounter of the two streams is 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 123 

very marked, for they do not mix at once, and 
the opaque water of the White Nile is at once 
distinguished from the clearer stream. From 
this point they flow together down to the Delta. 

Our steamer now ploughed its way southward 
instead of northward, and we were fairly started 
on our journey up the White Nile against the 
current. The river is very wide, and the shores 
are flat and green with lupins, among which ants 
move that prove, when examined through glasses, 
to be half-naked women bending over their toil. 
I have said the shores are flat the country beyond 
them is flat too, stretching away interminably to 
the deserts on the horizon ; a uniformity scarcely 
broken by a few scrub-like trees. Seen in the 
generous sunlight and pure air, this vast platitude 
is not unattractive. The wideness of the un- 
bounded horizon, the shining bosom of the great 
river, these give a sense of free breathing and the 
joy of illumined space. Here and there low green 
islands just rise above the water level, and flocks 
of wild ducks whirr into the air with their own 
peculiar, horizontal flight. 

The bird-life of the Sudan is increasingly wonder- 
ful the farther south one travels, It is indeed 



124 MY SUDAN YEAR 

the territory of the birds. In the Upper River, 
where human beings can only subsist precariously, 
birds of every species live and die in their millions. 
With field-glasses one can never be dull : there 
are always the birds a commonwealth of infinite 
variety. For them Nature provides abundantly ; 
the insect life, the fish life, the grub life, the seed 
life are all a vast larder for her spoiled children 
the birds. 

The next day, February 10, still saw the river 
at its widest the same expanse of shining river and 
flat featureless banks, save here and there where 
a village of tukls arose. These tukls resemble 
nothing so much as a collection of straw beehives, 
except that the beehive is better built. Their 
construction is simple. The conical straw roof is 
made first, and this is lifted, with much laughter 
and shouting and singing for noise drives evil 
spirits away on a rough circular palisade of 
sticks. The rest is added afterwards in much the 
same fashion as that in which a bird builds her 
nest. 

Our journey was enlivened at about 8 a.m., 
while we were at breakfast on deck,bythe smoulder- 
ing of the wood casing enclosing the smoke-stack. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 125 

It was evident that we were in danger of being 
burnt out, so axes were brought, and jagged holes 
hewn quickly in the casing, from which smoke 
poured forth. But under the direction of Abdu, a 
Berberine genius who was our Admirable Crichton 
throughout, the men brought water, which they 
hurled by cocoa-tins full on the conflagration 
through the apertures. A little before three in 
the afternoon we passed Jebel Arashkol. It" is 
a high barren mass of rocks, with several distinct 
peaks, and has a volcanic appearance. The highest 
peak is known as the Jebel Abd el Daim, or rather 
the Gebel Abd-el-Daim, for the J is pronounced G 
in the Sudan. The shore was so distant on either 
side that, to get a clear vision of any object, we 
were obliged to use strong field-glasses. At one 
village, Amara, I think, the villagers were sheep- 
washing. I watched the process for some time, 
as the reluctant sheep were half-carried, half- 
dragged out into the river for their bath ; their 
attendants standing waist-deep in the water. 
This would have been a highly dangerous pro- 
ceeding farther up the Nile ; but crocodiles rarely 
venture beyond Dueim nowadays. 
Our progress was very slow. It is a drowsy 



126 MY SUDAN YEAR 

business, this ploughing up-stream at midday. 
There is the constant thud of the engine as the 
boat moves in answer to the wheel of the reis in 
his little shelter above, the droning song of a 
bahari somewhere in the nugger dragged alongside, 
and a sun which blisters the paint. The natives 
converse in low tones, the banks are too far away 
and too flat to be interesting, and all you can do 
is to join in the general siesta. 

Approaching El Dueim, which is one hundred 
and twenty-five miles from Khartoum, the Nile 
gradually narrows, till at Dueim itself it is only a 
mile across. We arrived at Dueim in that magical 
hour which is " between the dog and the wolf." 
The after-glow was still keeping rosy little clouds 
captive in a long vista of pure green sky, while 
night rose from the horizon in heavy clouds, and 
the full moon had already made a white and 
tremulous highway across the river. Shadows 
and freshness stole up together after the long 
white glare of the day. The Cephalonia came to 
a standstill as close to the shallow shore as possible, 
yet not near enough to throw a board from the 
nugger to the strand. A native or two waded to 
land, the moon making white ripples about their 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 127 

feet, and passed up the milky shore into the little 
town, which was dark against the sky. A perfume 
stole across to us as we waited to see what would 
happen. It was a subtle, pervading breath of 
spices, which, like a half-told tale, stirred the 
imagination and materialised the romance of the 
dusky and silent African town before us. 

All at once we became aware of voices on the 
water's edge. A group of idlers Dongolawi for 
the most part was ready to convey us across 
to the land. Some of them were stripped to the 
waist, displaying torsos like that of Hercules. 
Their shining teeth, as they smiled up at us, and 
their outstretched arms, brawny and black, were 
the invitation. For a piastre or two we were 
borne on their shoulders through the water, across 
a strip of clay, and set down on the sandy shore 
beyond. 

They call Dueim hideous who know it by day- 
light, but by night it is strange and beautiful. 
In the moonlight we walked down one wide, 
straight street after another, sweet-smelling and 
paved with sand ; where gums, grain, incense, 
and precious woods were exposed for sale in deep 
baskets of woven halfa grass. The shops were 



128 MY SUDAN YEAR 

unlit, save where here and there a merchant had 
kindled a solitary candle in a shamadan or glass 
globe, but even this was hardly necessary with 
the tropical moon sailing up like a golden lamp. 
The town was very silent. A few white-clad 
natives conversed together in low tones where 
they met in twos and threes, and at one corner 
there was a click of dominoes as some players in 
a little mud cafe mixed their pieces. We en- 
deavoured to buy some of the incense that per- 
fumed the streets, but not knowing what it was 
called in Arabic, our efforts were in vain. At 
last an obliging merchant who sat on his heels 
with a friend outside his shop, looking like an 
ebony statue swathed in ivory draperies, made 
a gesture of perfect comprehension ; and, vanishing 
into the shadows of a neighbouring mud house, 
reappeared later with a bottle inscribed " Ess 
Bouquet ! " At last, the resourceful Abdu ap- 
pearing like a Genie of the Lamp, we bought what 
we had wished rock-like lumps of incense that 
looked like toffee which has been played with by 
a little boy. It contained all manner of gums 
and spices, he told us. 

Another moon-bathed, silent street brought us 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 129 

to some tukls. I looked in at one faintly illumined 
interior, and found the arrangements of the 
simplest. A man was brewing some coffee in a 
brown earthenware pot over a small charcoal fire, 
and, smiling politely, bade us enter. The furniture 
consisted only of an angareb and a pitcher or 
two, but the whole was spotlessly clean, for 
these riverine people are scrupulous in the care 
of their persons, and there are no fleas in the 
Sudan. 

At last we found ourselves back on the shore 
again, where sacks and bales and cases of all 
sizes were heaped. They contained gum, simsim 
(sesame), senna, durra, powdered fool Sudani or 
ground-nuts, and grains of various kinds ; for 
Dueim, till the railway from El Obeid was finished 
this year, was the jumping-off place for Kordofan, 
the highroad to that richest territory of the Sudan. 
From it caravans set forth, to return with produce 
which was shipped for the North ; and to Dueim, 
in the old times, Baggara slave-hunters brought 
their gangs of hapless captives. 

Since January of 1912 there is the swifter means 
of transport, and Dueim must gradually fall 
asleep on its sandy river shore. Formerly, camels 
9 



130 MY SUDAN YEAR 

were hired at Dueim if a man wished to travel into 
Kordofan, and a leisurely and Biblical journey 
was made across the sands and wild barren country 
until the wooded Nuba hills were reached. But 
the railway has put an end to that. A cinemato- 
graph was exhibited at El Obeid when the railway 
was declared open by Lord Kitchener, and the 
Kordofan chiefs who attended gaped at the miracle. 
The cinematograph and the railroad marked the 
beginning of a new era, one productive of peace 
and progress no doubt, but robbing gradually a 
hitherto unsophisticated set of barbarians of their 
simplicity. Civilisation may cut their claws and 
draw their teeth, but barbarians they will remain, 
in spite of cinematographs and railways, for the 
race tendency is strong. Civilisation will rid 
them of many qualities, but it may not replace 
them with any worth having. 

Apropos of the railway, it has been told me 
since that some Kordofan chiefs who were sent 
by the Government down to Port Sudan to meet 
the King and Queen on their return voyage from 
India could not believe that so long a voyage 
could be performed in three days, and brought 
provisions for several weeks ! In the case of one 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 131 

chief, the provisions included five wives, each 
bearing a pot of merissa. 

As a matter of fact, Dueim, whose inhabitants 
are mostly agriculturists, has many disadvantages 
from the white man's point of view. It is very 
malarious during the autumn months, called 
darat by the natives, when the rains have swollen 
the Nile and flooded the khors. For down the 
stream float pieces of sudd, bearing the malignant 
anopheline mosquito, and the khors, or back- 
waters, lie stagnant and act as breeding-places for 
the pest. Later on, the health-giving north wind 
springs up but those three months have exacted 
their toll of fever. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

our arrival, we found Butler Bey, the 
Governor of the Province, on board. An 
Irishman, of a genial and enthusiastic tempera- 
ment, he had spent many years in the Sudan, 
and, although his retirement was impending, he 
confessed that he hated the idea of leaving his 
work. The Nuba country in Central Kordofan 
seems to root itself in the hearts of the Englishmen 
who have had to administer justice and maintain 
peace there. For the natives they develop actual 
affection. " They're topping people/' quoth Butler 
Bey, with his jolly smile. As for the raids by 
the Baggara Arabs on the Nuba gebels or hills, he 
said it was often a case of " Cherchez la femme." 
He used to threaten the Baggara girls with im- 
prisonment if another raid occurred. ' You 
naughty girls ! Next time there is trouble, I'll 

132 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 133 

clap every one of you into gaol ! " It was this 
way. There would be a dance, and the comely 
young Baggara girls would taunt the young 
bloods, saying, " Ah, if our mothers and grand- 
mothers had wanted slaves, our fathers and grand- 
fathers would have procured them ; but you are 
afraid ! " 

Then the young men, piqued, would creep up 
into the hills, bag a few Nubas or get bagged 
themselves and return with the slaves to parade 
before the girls. 

Slave-raiding is looked upon as a species of 
fox-hunting, and the Nubas are quite able to get 
their own back. One gebel runs sheer down in a 
precipice some two hundred feet from edge to 
foot ; and the Nubas used to catch a couple of 
Baggara Arabs when there was a feud between 
them owing to one of these little slaving raids, and 
prod them up the hill at the end of their spears, 
until they were forced over the precipice, to be 
dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks below. 

The Nuba unmarried maidens have wrestling 
bouts among them. Professor and Mrs. Seligmann, 
who travelled in Kordofan to make ethnological 
notes, witnessed one of these contests though 



134 MY SUDAN YEAR 

native men are not allowed to be spectators. 
They reported, however, that the tree-tops around 
swayed with Zacchaeuses who had swarmed up 
to view the match. The winners of these wrestling 
bouts are much sought after in marriage. Men 
wrestlers go about from village to village, the 
champions being considered great men. 

One day Butler Bey went down through Southern 
Kordofan to Dinkaland. He approached a village, 
in advance of his caravan, and sat down under a 
tree to wait for it and rest. He had entered into 
conversation with a Dinka who could talk Arabic, 
when suddenly his convoy of camels appeared. 
There was a general stampede. The Dinkas of 
this part had never seen a camel before, and were 
afraid that they would eat them. It was a long 
time before they could be persuaded to return and 
open proceedings, and then Butler Bey, thinking 
that at last he could get a siesta below the tree, 
laid him down. But it was not his lucky day for 
repose. A procession was seen approaching, com- 
posed of about twenty men and boys, who sang a 
chant. They marched around him in an ever- 
diminishing circle, until he was hemmed in. Then, 
one by one, they approached him, crawling, and 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 135 

licked the palm of his hand. At the end of the 
procession of lickers, a bull was led, and this was 
solemnly presented to him. No sooner had they 
retired than, to his dismay, he saw a fresh twenty 
approaching from the village, and these went 
through the same evolutions and presented another 
bull. This was repeated, until he was the proud 
possessor of five bulls. During his progress through 
the district he had other bulls presented, and 
they became rather a nuisance. He refused the 
last five offered by polite villagers ; nevertheless, 
when he returned to the village two years after- 
wards, they brought him the bulls again, saying 
that they had kept them for him. 

In connection with this habit of hand-licking, 
Butler Bey told us an amusing anecdote. When 
he went down the Sobat with Sir William Maxwell 
years ago on a pacification mission, the natives 
gathered on the bank at one point, making a great 
noise ; and a rainmaker, in full war-paint, was seen 
to be using incantations, as it was thought that 
the steamer with its gleaming guns and lights 
had the evil eye. One Sheikh and his retinue were 
at last persuaded to come on board. When they 
arrived on deck, they crawled on all fours to Sir 



136 MY SUDAN YEAR 

William Maxwell, took his hand, and spat into his 
palm. Far from being an insult, this was their 
form of showing good faith. The same unpleasant 
attention was shown to Butler Bey. By degrees 
they gained confidence, and the Sheikh was solemnly 
presented with an old opera-hat and a table-cloth 
of many colours ; and his delight was complete 
when Butler Bey hung around his neck a chain of 
beads, with a spoonbait divested of its hooks in 
the centre, as an ornament. He paddled back 
proudly with the hat on his head, the tablecloth 
draped around him, and the necklace around his 
neck. The envious ones on shore made for him 
in a body, the tablecloth was torn into hundreds 
of pieces, and numbers of delighted natives sported 
the fragments. The ice was broken. After such 
generosity, they got quite friendly. 



We woke up the next morning to find ourselves 
in wooded country, and by wooded I do not mean 
green. The whole riverscape here was khaki- 
coloured ; the trees were miserable and burnt, 
the very water rushes, which should have been 
green, were yellowed with sun. The grass be- 
neath the thorny undergrowth was pallid and 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 137 

rank ; the tyranny of the sun was over the place 
like an iron hand. The only verdant patches upon 
which the eye could rest were the patches of 
papyrus that grows here and there, its plumy head 
bending before the north wind. And presently 
we saw a small island some four yards across, 
floating down stream. It was composed of grasses 
and reeds it was an adventurous piece of sudd 
that had floated down from the Great Bog for 
which we were bound. It was easy to imagine 
how a river could be blocked by similar floating 
islands. Other things reminded us we were leaving 
civilisation behind us. Some one on the boat saw 
some monkeys springing from branch to branch 
on the nearest shore. At nine forty-five we arrived 
at our wooding station Dibeikir, one hundred and 
sixty miles from Khartoum. 

A village of tukls stood on the shore, a little way 
from the neat stacks of wood piled up by the 
landing stage. This landing stage consisted merely 
of ragged stakes driven into the bed of the river 
and a footway of branches and rushes into which 
the foot sank as one walked upon it. The barefoot 
carriers passed along, bearing wood on their 
shoulders, which they deposited in the nugger. 



138 MY SUDAN YEAR 

They worked leisurely, however, bringing only a 
log at a time. Truly the suddite would be a 
boon if only in consideration for the time wasted 
in wooding. However, the scheme has not been 
proved workable yet, and it is possible that petro- 
leum fuel may yet oust all other. 

We went ashore ; the men to shoot. A village 
of tukls looks very much like a collection of hay- 
ricks, but a close inspection proved them to be 
clean, although cocks and hens ran in and out as 
they do in Irish cottages, and small kids, whose 
mammas were wandering about with the herds 
outside the village, were given the freedom of the 
little homesteads. A zariba or protection of 
thorns often formed a kind of yard about a tukl. 
The women, swathed in their dark blue tobes, 
came out to gaze and smile at us. One asked 
where we were going. When we replied " Fok 
baid ketir " (Yonder very far), she seemed satis- 
fied. For every one understands " Fok " here to 
mean southwards. Mangy dogs, naked children, 
and semi-naked girls completed the population of 
the village. The men were out with the herds. 
At the end of the village stood the pigeon-cote, 
an odd structure of which I took a photograph. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 139 

Most of the villages of the Upper Sudan possess 
pigeon-houses, I was told. Outside the village a 
sunbaked track led into the surrounding bush. 
The grey soil of the trodden path was cracked into 
wide fissures from the heat. Dry, unkempt grass, 
thorny brake, cassia trees red of stem and pro- 
tected with spikes, their powdery balls still honey- 
sweet if one plucked and smelt them, and other 
trees blighted and sparse in fact, a barren mockery 
of a forest stretched to right and left of this 
footway. It is as if Nature had exhausted the 
colours on her palette, and had painted this 
part of the world in browns and greys and 
ochres. 

Half a mile out, we came upon high-shouldered, 
meek-looking oxen, tender-eyed as Leah, driven 
by a herdsman. He was black and unclothed to 
the loins, and wore a crownless sailor hat after 
the manner of a halo. After the sound of their 
scuttering hoofs had died away again, there was 
silence except for the sound of many wings when 
flocks of pigeons or wood-doves fluttered up in 
twenties and thirties, and away. 

Then we returned to the village, over which vul- 
tures, strong-winged and patient, hovered, watchful 



140 MY SUDAN YEAR 

for offal. The guns returned too, with guinea-fowl, 
a franklin partridge, small quail, and a blue roller 
with long tail-feathers. They had seen monkeys 
and the spoor of a hippo. 

We did not get under way again until one 
o'clock, wooding having occupied more than three 
unprofitable hours. During lunch we saw a large 
water python, about twelve feet long and a 
foot round, swimming powerfully in the water. 
Soon afterwards a small crocodile was sighted, 
sunning itself unsuspectingly on the bank. Some 
one at once rushed for a rifle, and a bang from 
the top deck was followed by the sudden jerk 
upwards of the reptile's tail. The shot had got 
him square in the middle. He flapped and flopped 
into the water, and that was the last we saw of 
him. A hippo, our first, was the next excitement, 
his pink and black snout showing like a half 
submerged buoy just above the river. He was 
too far away, happily, for a shot. There is, to me, 
something brutal in this indiscriminate potting 
at hippos. No one who has seen the good- 
tempered intelligence of hippos in captivity can 
help feeling a friendliness for this uncouth monster. 
He is a vegetarian, he does no harm to any one, 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 141 

yet any tourist with a 5 licence, bad shot or 
otherwise, is entitled to shoot at him, without even 
dispatching him. It is usually replied that he 
destroys the agricultural efforts of the native. 
But in the sudd country and much of the Upper 
Nile there is no attempt at agriculture on the part 
of the native ; and native delight at getting hippo- 
meat is no invariably valid excuse either, for the 
poor hippo is often slaughtered and left to rot in 
the water. It is true that north of Kodok " sports- 
men " are limited to four hippos, but after Kodok 
is passed there is absolutely no restriction as to 
number. It is the wounding to which I object. 
Surely the crocodile, though he be counted vermin, 
is entitled to the mercy of death, and how much 
more the amiable hippo ! 

We passed Abba Island later in the day. It is 
fringed by reeds and papyrus, and the trees are 
almost as green as if they stood by an English 
river. The Mahdi's house is still visible amongst 
the trees, for it was here, before his days of great- 
ness, that he followed his trade of boat-builder, 
and let his imagination, fevered by asceticism, 
take the flights which ended in his proclamation 
of his Divine appointment. It is a green and 



142 MY SUDAN YEAR 

peaceful-looking spot in which to have evolved 
so bloody a mission ! 

While the island was still in sight, we perceived 
three hippopotami like three black blobs on the 
water. But our approach sent them diving under 
the water, and they did not show themselves 
again. A black and white goose with a black 
knob on its beak was shot, and a small boat 
lowered to pick it up. It was subsequently cooked 
and served up, and proved palatable though 
coarse-flavoured : the guinea-fowl, too, were good 
eating, and better than the Sudan chicken. 

The moon had risen before we arrived at Costi, 
a small station just above the new railway bridge. 
Some of our party were to join us there by train 
from Khartoum, so, without going ashore, we 
remained by the river bank till morning. 

After the heat to which we had become accus- 
tomed, the next day proved to be chilly. The 
sky was grey, the thermometer registered 74 
maximum and 60 minimum in the shade, and we 
shivered and wrapped ourselves warmly. The 
bridge at Costi was reached at 7.30, and we waited 
until it should be opened. The bridge over 
which the railway to El Obeid passes is a fine 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 143 

structure, and resembles the bridge across the 
Blue Nile at Khartoum. It is supposed to open 
for river traffic between six a.m. and eleven a.m., 
but, in spite of our hooting, it remained churlishly 
closed until ten. 

At Hillet Abbas we stopped to enable the 
Inspector who had joined us at Costi to get on 
shore, with the intention of riding back to Costi. 
A Shilluk village stood close to the landing stage, 
and I had an opportunity of seeing some of these 
people at close quarters for the first time. They 
were a fine-looking set of men, and their curious 
coiffure and ornaments gave them an imposing 
appearance. Farther south they are often entirely 
without clothing, but these men wore a toga-like 
garment of cotton, which was draped over one 
shoulder and left the upper part of the body bare. 
Several of them wore sandals. I endeavoured to 
buy a bracelet of solid ivory about two inches 
thick from one man, but as I thought the price he 
asked five reals was excessive, I did not purchase 
it. (A " small " real equals two shillings, a 
11 big " real is the equivalent of the American 
dollar.) Later, I learnt that it is no unusual 
thing to pay as much as 5 for a good, thick, 



144 MY SUDAN YEAR 

two-rimmed specimen, embellished by black in- 
cisions. 

Shortly after leaving, we encountered more 
masses of sudd, composed chiefly of papyrus 
(dees) and the rank grass called by the natives 
umm soof (mother of wool). These sudd islands 
look feathery and beautiful when seen like this, 
argosies of green, floating downwards. The shores 
appeared to be well wooded. Heglig and sunt, 
acacias and cassias, grew thickly to the very 
water's edge. 

We wooded at Abu Zeid. This is a pretty 
village of tukls surrounded by trees. The women 
asked for baksheesh when a camera was levelled 
at them, but anxious mothers called their little 
ones into safe shelter and looked angrily at the 
would-be photographers. Again I marvelled at 
the cleanliness of these villages. No offensive 
sights meet the eyes, no offensive odours the nose. 
It is almost incredible after the filth and noisome- 
ness of Egyptian villages. We passed several 
hippos and crocodiles they roused no excitement. 
It is strange how quickly a wonder becomes 
commonplace. But though one's sense of novelty 
may become blunted, the sense of beauty is always 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 145 

fresh, and this was gratified that evening by the 
vision of Jebelein (the Two Mountains), its twin 
peaks silhouetted in silver grey against a sky 
ivoried by the full moon. The Japanese see Fuji 
so in inspired moments, and these rugged peaks 
in Africa looked no whit less lovely under the 
magic of the tropical night. 



10 



CHAPTER XII 

TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

farther one gets to the magic South, the 
more marvellous and multiform is the bird 
and beast life of this wonderful river. In my 
records for February 13, I find that I spent most 
of the morning in a deck-chair with field-glasses 
to my eyes, watching the population of the bank 
beginning with two hippos, a mother and child, 
which stood, pink-nosed and fearless, amongst 
the tall grasses at the water's edge, to gaze at 
us. By the time that a zealous sportsman had 
got his rifle, they had leisurely disappeared into 
the water, leaving nothing more than an air- 
bubble and a ripple behind them. Farther on 
five or more hippopotami were disporting 
themselves, their wet black heads just showing 
above the surface. Tiny reed-warblers rose from 
the banks in clouds like smoke, revolving and 

146 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 147 

turning simultaneously as if in answer to an un- 
heard word of command. Diving eagles, perched 
on low branches above the river, descended with 
a plop like that of a falling stone into the stream 
after fish, and afterwards stood on the bank 
extending their wings as a dancer spreads her 
skirts, in order to dry them in the sun and wind. 
Reeves and ruffs, sunbirds, rollers, pigeons, bee- 
guides, fluttered in the trees ; and water birds 
long-legged cranes, kingfishers, weaver-birds and 
a host of others, tenanted the rushes and shallows. 
Herodotus mentions the crocodile bird, which 
enters the crocodile's jaws as he suns himself on 
the bank and picks his teeth ; and I was assured 
that there is really a little parasite bird tolerated 
by the crocodile in the same way in which the 
rhinoceros tolerates the rhinoceros bird. The 
latter lives upon the vermin which infest the hide, 
and has long curved claws specially adapted for 
clinging on. He repays the hospitality of his host 
by warning him by his cries of approaching danger. 
I do not think, however, that the crocodile bird 
is on such friendly and reciprocal terms with its 
patron. 
During the morning, water-buck were sighted 



148 MY SUDAN YEAR 

on the port side, and the boat was brought to a 

standstill, in order that the men of the party 

might follow them up. We who were no Nimrods 

were carried to shore. It was desolate enough. 

The cotton soil was blackened, for the natives set 

fire to the old growth, in order to enable new grass 

to grow. A long plain of this blackened sundried 

soil stretched before us, enlivened only by some 

miserable shrub-like bushes and trees. Just by 

the river's edge the papyrus was green, and brilliant 

morning glories, pink and white, twined about a 

shrub which resembled a Cape gooseberry. 

Another bush proved to be the prized arak, from 

which our crew at once cut off sticks and shoots, 

for the wood of the arak is used to clean the teeth, 

the end being sucked and frayed until it becomes 

a brush. It is supposed to possess beneficial 

qualities, and is white and soft, the bark being 

light grey in colour. The Arabs and Sudanese 

are very particular about this detail of their 

toilet. 

One man collected some of the giant white 
snail shells to be found by the water, and brought 
them to me as souvenirs. In the light ash left 
by the burnt grasses, I saw the delicate imprint 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 149 

of a gazelle's foot, left, I suppose, that morning 
when the pretty creature had gone down to drink. 
The spoor of a hippo was not far off. 

As we re-embarked, two young Arabs galloped 
up, holding enormous spears in their left hands, 
and drew their horses abruptly back on their 
haunches when they reached the bank. It was 
pure " showing-off," and these men, bronze- 
coloured and fine-featured, were slender and grace- 
ful as women, though every muscle was taut and 
trained. They conversed with our crew, and 
finally one bartered his spear for twenty piastres. 
Then, smiling and joyous, they rode off once 
more ; circled the plain like hawks and, reining 
in abruptly on the shore by our boats, stood up 
in their stirrups and shook their spears in farewell. 
In the clear atmosphere the two white-clad eques- 
trian figures against the background of black had 
the effect of an antique Roman cameo. 

Nor were they our only visitors. Before we 
left, some tall Shilluks, bearing spears, came up 
to inspect us. Their necks were adorned with 
necklaces, and their arms with countless metal 
bracelets fitting tightly to the arm. They ap- 
peared moved by no vulgar curiosity ; they merely 



150 MY SUDAN YEAR 

gazed with mild interest at the mad white folk 
who set so much store by the things which cannot 
matter. For the Shilluk, time is not, beyond the 
time of day or night according to the sun or stars ; 
he does not count years ; he does not know even 
his own age. He can seldom reckon more than a 
hundred. And travel, for the sake of travelling, 
can only seem to him a species of lunacy. So 
much seemed expressed by their incurious gazing. 

As we steamed away, a little procession passed on 
the bank, bound, doubtless, for some neighbouring 
village. It included a woman and a child, seated, 
Europa-wise, on a bull, for the bull is a beast of 
burden here. A second bull was laden with the 
household effects, consisting of rolls of straw 
matting and cloth, slung up on either flank in 
panier fashion ; and arched over his back was a 
semicircular shelter of woven rush. The little 
band of travellers looked at us, and we at them. 
Did it represent a family flitting, or an impending 
marriage, or a commercial expedition ? We never 
knew, but left it plodding seriously on its way as 
we steamed out of the radius of vision. 

Wooding took place at a village a few miles 
beyond Renk. Large mrahs or pens built of straw 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 151 

and stakes told us that the place was rich in cattle. 
The tukls were surrounded by hashes, or en- 
closures. Four little boys followed us on our tour 
of inspection, and eagerly collected the black film 
papers which one of our party threw away, and 
affixing them to the end of sticks like small black 
banners, acted as our escort. They were merry, 
pleasant little children, and were intensely in- 
terested when allowed to peep at the view-finder 
and see the pictures reflected in it. I asked the 
lightest in colour his tribe : it transpired that he 
was a Jaalin ; two others were Dinkas, and a 
fourth Nuba. A shy Dinka warrior, a youth of 
about six foot two, with an innocent babyish 
expression, was captured by one of our Arabs and 
brought up to be photographed. He spoke only a 
few words of Arabic, but the granting of his 
murmured request for tumbak sent him off, de- 
lighted, with an ounce or two of tobacco. My 
small friends were overjoyed by the present of 
some chocolate. Another boat was wooding beside 
us, and Captain O'Sullivan, Governor of the Upper 
Nile Province, proved to be on board. He came 
over to see us, and what he told us about Dinkas 
I have embodied in another chapter. 



152 MY SUDAN YEAR 

One of our party was dissatisfied with his 
shikari, and accordingly, when a young man in 
somewhat soiled white drapery detached himself 
from a group of idlers by the bank and presented 
a bundle of well-worn chits, they were read with 
interest. Former employers recommended him, 
and praised particularly his eyesight and keenness ; 
accordingly, he was engaged on the spot. He 
was a Habbaniya Arab from Southern Darfur, of 
something less than medium height, though lithe 
of build ; his dark features were pleasing, and 
before the end of our trip he showed himself to 
have plenty of personality. When told that he 
could come with us, he wrapped the chits once 
more in the piece of rag from which he had taken 
them, unwound his turban, tied them into a 
corner, and swathed it again round his head. He 
preferred a request that he might fetch his luggage 
from the village, and on receiving permission, 
returned just before the boat started, with a 
spear ! 

It appeared later that some of the Dinka women 
in the village had not seen white women before. 
Some one asked their opinion of us. They replied 
that it was a pity we were so white, The thing 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 153 

that interested them most was our figures, par- 
ticularly that of one lady whose waist measurement 
was eighteen inches. ' Where," inquired one of 
these black ladies " where do they put their 
food ? " 

The next day dedicated to St. Valentine we 
hugged the shore, for the current was deepest near 
the bank. The trees were thick and tangled with 
creepers ; the air was alive with glittering darting 
creatures. Their varieties were mostly unknown 
to me ; but diving hawks and eagles and the long- 
legged water-birds were the most solemn amongst 
them. For the rest, red, blue and green warblers 
fluttered up and down like showers of living 
flowers ; rollers passed on brilliant wings, and 
birds of iridescent plumage mirrored the light and 
broke it into rainbow colours on their glossy 
feathers. We passed herds of hippo, their snouts 
and occasionally their backs showing above the 
water. Once a great crocodile slipped slimily 
into the river. The nearer one gets to the damper 
heat of the South, the greener and richer does 
the river bank become. We had left behind the 
parched plains of the North. 

At Melut, where we wooded, a number of Dinkas 



154 MY SUDAN YEAR 

were ranged upon the bank ; slender as rods, 
their tall slim bodies entirely naked and plastered 
with wood-ash except the face giving them the 
look of grey wraiths. The wood-ash serves to 
protect the body from mosquito bites. Their hair 
was matted and clipped into designs ; a tall plume 
was stuck into it. Ear-rings, bead and metal or 
ivory bracelets, and, occasionally, a small rag, 
were their only adornments ; and every man bore a 
spear. They seemed to live in a state of glorious 
idleness, to judge from the way in which they 
settled down to an hour's staring. It must not 
be thought that they are dead to the sense of 
modesty. A lady, resident in Khartoum, told me 
that on one of her trips down river, she took a 
fancy to a necklace worn by a Dinka, and offered 
to buy it. It was absolutely all that he had on, 
beyond his own skin ; but he modestly retired 
behind a tree to take it off. 

The village, of tukls as usual, was remarkable 
for its curious dove-cotes. One tukl was pointed 
out as " the souk " or bazaar ; and within sat 
the merchant, an Arab from Haifa. His wares 
were ranged inside, and consisted of blue and white 
beads, sugar, candles, and other simple com- 




A VILLAGE SHOP. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 155 

modities. The village store of these wooding 
stations is often the property of the clerk in charge, 
who is usually an Egyptian or Arab, but not in- 
frequently a Greek. In an out-of-the-way spot 
the Greek quickly sinks down to the level of the 
native ; or rather, much lower, since he loses the 
white man's virtues and does not gain the savage's 
good qualities. It is scarcely to be wondered at. 
Absolute solitude among savages, hardship, fever, 
and the damp horror of the rains ; these eat out 
the heart of the white man unless he be as easily 
adaptive as the Oriental Greek. I always re- 
member with vivid horror the appearance of one 
Government clerk his soiled tarbush proclaiming 
his official position. He was a miserable specimen, 
pock-marked, debased-looking, worn to a thread 
with fever. No other white man could have stood 
the job. He stood it at the cost of the white 
man's pride. 

I managed to get a photograph of two young 
girls grinding durra between two stones. They 
were so astonished at my appearance that they 
remained as if petrified over their task. The 
little living-tukls were spotlessly clean and smelt 
as sweet as a field of corn. The richest villager, 



156 MY SUDAN YEAR 

apparently, boasted no more than a few pots, an 
angareb and a blanket. 

One of our Arabs, who spoke a few words of the 
Dinka language, suggested to the grey phantoms 
on shore that they should entertain us with a native 
dance or diluka. Their stony calm broke at last 
into wintry smiles, if the word could be used in a 
temperature of 86 degrees in the shade ! They 
capered, shook their spears, lunged out and leapt 
in the air, then as suddenly collapsed into the same 
state of staring inaction. I bought a plumed 
spear from one brave for six shillings. 

Just before we passed Melut, we saw grass fires 
on either side ; sending up smoke and flame into 
the sky for some ten or twenty feet. The flames 
moved slowly, crackling and spitting, and leaving 
black desolation in their wake. Under that fiery 
sun which spared nothing save that which the 
river fed, there was something peculiarly ghastly 
in the line of flame. 





THE DILUKA IN PROGRESS. 



CHAPTER XIII 

TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

Tj^ASHODA, that forgotten bone of contention, 
is no more. You may search the map for 
it in vain, for, in a burst of entente cordiale, it 
was erased from the map. The riverside town 
where Kitchener met Major Marchand on a certain 
memorable occasion is now known as Kodok and 
is the capital of the Upper Nile Province. We 
steamed up to it in the grey heat of a February 
morning, the thermometer registering already 98 
in the shade ; and, at the first glance, it did not 
look the kind of place about which rational people 
could quarrel. A wide, unoccupied area of bare 
soil, devoid of blade of grass or grace of herb, 
stretches between the town of tukls and the river. 
The whole unattractive place is as destitute of 
vegetation as a barrack square ; the tukls stand 
in long, dreary, regular rows, and everything visible, 

157 



158 MY SUDAN YEAR 

except the sky, which is leaden with heat, is brown. 
London has nothing more drab. Brown earth, 
brown tukls, brown horizon, brown people the 
latter nearer black if accuracy be observed. The 
natives here are mostly Shilluks, for the Mek or 
Melek (King) of the Shilluks lives at a short distance 
from the town in all his native state. 

These Meks are a long-established dynasty, the 
present Mek being the twenty-sixth of his line. 
The succession never passes from father to son, 
for the Mek is chosen from two royal families 
alternately, which are related but not identical, 
and this arrangement does not, as one might 
expect, provoke great tribal disputes. When the 
Anglo-Egyptian Government took over the country 
after the defeat of the Dervishes, the then Mek was 
sent into captivity at Haifa, as the Shilluks showed 
a disposition to be troublesome. He was a simple- 
minded old man who had never travelled far, 
and Bishop Gwynne told me that when he saw 
him at Haifa one day, the old pagan conversed 
with him by means of an interpreter. Apparently, 
he had been interested in the assiduity with which 
his companions in adversity Mahdists and 
Mohammedans said their daily prayers. He said 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 159 

that he thought that in future he would pray five 
times a day, as they did. The Bishop replied that 
prayer was an excellent thing, and that Christians 
usually prayed twice a day. Some time after- 
wards the Bishop paid another visit to the Mek, 
who said to him despondently, " I can please 
nobody about this praying. I shall be like you, 
and never pray at all." 

Should an aged Mek outlive his full power of 
body and mind, the " law of the pack/' as Kipling 
says, ordains that his chief wife shall judicially 
put an end to his life. The present Mek is already 
old, and I do not suppose that, even should he 
attain a still greater age, a similar fate could 
overtake him under present conditions. The 
Shilluks have a tendency to regard him as an 
independent monarch who condescends to help 
the Government, but this idea is gradually dying 
out, as the old Mek leaves administration of tribal 
land more and more in the hands of the inspectors. 

On the high bank, or dyke of the river, a number 
of Shilluks stood, at their usual magnificent 
occupation of contemplation ; equipped with 
shields of crocodile skin, long spears, knives, and 
scanty clothing. A rag or a string of beads is 



160 MY SUDAN YEAR 

considered an elegant, even a superfluous, costume 
by a Shilluk. But they are fond of bracelets, and 
often two-thirds of their arms are covered by 
countless bands of metal, beads or ivory, in some 
cases, where the arm has outgrown them, so small 
that they are sunken into the flesh. These gaunt 
giants gathered around us at a respectful but 
curious distance ; and, through the medium of 
Abdu, I bought some curious pipes from one of 
them, measuring about eighteen inches in length, 
made of terracotta and bamboo, and extremely 
heavy ; also a knobkerry or club, weighing as 
much as an athlete's dumb-bell, and hewn from a 
single piece of wood. Such a weapon would easily 
brain a man at one blow. 

There were shops among the tukls, but the 
merchants only sold cloth, grain, and the com- 
modities of necessity, which, however, included 
tinned fruits and vegetables and beads. Some 
black, smiling women the women have always 
more to say than the men questioned us as to 
our destination, to which we replied, as usual, 
" Fok ! " (Yonder !) which ambiguous reply satisfied 
their curiosity. 

Kodok is a big place as these tukl-towns go ; 




VIEW IN KODOK (p'ASHODA). 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 161 

but, with a baking sun pouring down its vertical 
rays upon our heads, we did not feel inclined to 
explore it for long, and so returned to the ship, 
passing a little caravan of bulls laden with mer- 
chandise. It is strange to see these animals taking 
the place of the camels of the North, but their 
mild patient countenances give the lie to the 
fierceness with which bulls are accredited. The 
baggage bull has the amiability of the mildest 
Alderney cow ; a little child could guide him, 
and often does. It is literally true in this corner 
of the world that the ox lies down with the ass. 

Two hours brought us to Lul ; and here we 
stopped to enable an Italian passenger to borrow a 
rifle from the fathers, for it is at this place that 
the Austrian fathers have established their mission 
settlement for the benefit of the Shilluks, whom 
they instruct in various handicrafts of civilisation. 
I was told that one father, who is a learned man, 
has acquired more of the Shilluk tongue than any 
white man living, and has made a collection of 
Shilluk stories and songs. Apparently he does 
not join unqualifiedly in the universal praise of the 
Shilluks, for one hears from some people that they 
live in an idyllic state of simplicity and innocence 
11 



162 MY SUDAN YEAR 

and that their morals are as fine as their dress is 
elementary. On the contrary, he asserts that 
many of the folk-songs show a lack of moral sense, 
and that he does not permit the younger fathers 
to read translations of them. He finds many 
admirable qualities in the Shilluk, but deprecates 
their unconquerable hatred of work. The occupa- 
tions of the Shilluk are the occupations of a gentle- 
man of leisure hunting and fishing. They leave 
the cultivation of their durra mainly to their 
women-folk, also the grinding and baking of the 
same. The fathers at Lul have gradually per- 
suaded some of the men to work for them, and I 
noticed that the Shilluks who stood by the mission 
landing-stage were more clothed than usual, possibly 
owing to the representations and influence of the 
fathers. It is a malaria-ridden place, though the 
mission garden is green and well-attended ; and 
the Superior was, at the time of our calling, in bed 
with an attack of fever. The father who brought 
a rifle on board was a delicate-looking man, whose 
health, to judge by his appearance, was none of the 
best. He was very agreeable and charming, and 
courteously lent a *577 bore by Holland, and five 
rounds of ammunition more or less damaged. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 163 

The remainder of the day was uneventful. We 
saw a good many crocodiles, also a wild ostrich ; 
and were visited by one or two serut flies and a few 
mosquitoes. The poisonousness of the serut fly 
is somewhat exaggerated. If one be in a good 
state of health, the bite of a serut fly does no more 
harm than the sting of a gnat. But it is very 
voracious and attacks you with great pertinacity. 
Though it is as large as a wasp, it alights with 
such feather lightness that it is almost impossible 
to feel it. The first warning of its presence is a 
pin-like thrust into your epidermis. As for the 
mosquitoes, they had hardly made themselves 
noticeable as yet ; it was possible to sit out in 
evening dress without covering either neck or 
arms, and our mosquito boots were not brought 
into requisition until we were in the midst of the 
sudd region. 

The evening being therefore both lovely and 
mosquito-less, we sat talking far into the night. 
I remember that an Anglo-Egyptian official on 
board, when asked what was the " tightest corner 
he had ever been in since he came to the Sudan," 
told us of an incident which I transcribe here. It 
happened in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. A certain native 



164 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Sultan, secure as he thought in being fifty-five 
miles away, had sent insulting messages and letters 
when told by the Government to come in. It 
was decided to give him a lesson, and to bring him 

in. So Captain A started with all the forces 

at his command, which consisted of only twenty- 
eight men, recruited for the most part in the 
Sultan's own district. He chose a devious route, 
and arriving at the village which was the Sultan's 
head-quarters at night, set his twenty-eight men 
around it, and sent a deputation in to say that he 
had come to talk to the inhabitants. But they 
took fright, blew the alarm, and opened fire on 
the party of ambassadors, who forthwith returned 
without delivering their message. There was 
nothing to do but to fight. The Sultan escaped 
by a subterranean passage early in the combat, 
but the assaulting party were victorious, losing 
only one man, whilst many of the villagers were 
killed. The Government troops entered the village 
and searched it ; then, remembering that they 
had left only five men at the Government station 
and thinking that the Sultan's next move would 
probably be to attack it, they hurried back without 
waiting to rest, reaching the station at eleven 




2 T, 




165 

o'clock the next morning. So, altogether, they 
had marched more than one hundred and ten miles 
and had an engagement, all within fifty-nine 
hours ! 

In listening to these and other tales of the 
adventure of distant administrators, I was forcibly 
reminded of what Mr. Putnam Weale wrote of a 
great Englishman in China, the late Sir Robert 
Hart : " It would seem as if the Fates had made 
in the Englishman a man who, though often 
narrow-minded and insular in his own country, 
has it in his power to identify himself completely 
with the interests of foreign countries beyond many 
seas, and to carry tasks of the most dissimilar 
nature to a successful conclusion." The Inspector 
in these outlying provinces has to be a Jack-of -all- 
trades. 

Civil and military powers are welded in him ; 
he must be almost entirely dependent upon his 
own judgment. His authority rests, as in the case 
I have just related, upon his own personality and 
his powers of " bluffing." There is no person on 
earth so easily intimidated by " bluff " as the 
native. To illustrate this, the following story is 
apropos. A certain English official found himself 



166 MY SUDAN YEAR 

shut in on a gebel in the Nuba country in Kordofan, 
surrounded by four hundred hostile tribesmen, who 
had avowed their intention of killing him. " How 
did you escape ? " I asked, when he told me the 
tale. " Oh, by talking ! " he replied. " I asked 
them what earthly good they would do themselves 
by killing me. Was it because they disliked me 
as an individual ? If that were the case, let them 
kill me quickly, always remembering that there 
would be a heavy price to pay to the Government. 
If it were because I was a Government official, I 
must remind them that if I were killed, another 
official would be sent in my place, possibly two, 
and that for each life taken, many would be de- 
manded. If they imagined that they could rid 
themselves of the Government by killing its 
emissaries, they were mightily mistaken. Besides 
putting the matter to them thus, I appealed to 
their sense of hospitality and right. ' You are 
brave men/ I said ; ' do you think it courageous 
to kill one by four hundred ? If you will, appoint 
one man and we will fight it out, he and I. I am 
a stranger and at your mercy ; you are in your 
country and in great numbers. It is obvious, 
therefore, that you can do what you like/ ' To 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 167 

his surprise, the tribesmen let him go, and finally 
established the most friendly relations. It is 
often observed, with some justice, by captious 
critics in Egypt, that the " what-a-good-boy- 
am-I ! " attitude of the high official in the Sudan 
Government Service is both irritating and hardly 
justified by actual fact. In Khartoum a perpetual 
back-patting goes on. Mr. or Major So-and-So 
is complimented on his energy and devotion ; 
such-and-such a department is extolled ; and, if 
one were to judge by this attitude of self -con- 
gratulation, one would conclude that we the 
English were philanthropists actuated only by 
the noble desire to improve the lot of the un- 
sophisticated Sudanese. 

Now it is obviously ridiculous to talk as if we 
governed the Sudan for the good of its inhabitants 
only. The Sudan is not a philanthropic institution 
administered by paternal young men who are 
paragons and saints and Ouida heroes all in a 
breath. Neither is it a country in which the brutal 
Englishman exploits and kicks the cowed native, 
as some others would have us believe. It is, 
frankly, an investment, and we, as business people, 
are waiting patiently for our percentage, and not 



168 MY SUDAN YEAR 

forcing the country in any way, as the Belgians 
have done the Congo. It is not a Utopia. The 
officials are adequately paid, and work for their 
pay. But the majority of Englishmen in the 
Sudan are public school and University men, men 
of both Services, and men of ability. They realise 
keenly that national prestige lies in the hands of 
every individual who works in the Sudan, and, 
as in honour bound, most of them do their best 
to keep it up. And the lion's share of com- 
mendation must go to the men who work in 
the outlying districts and have to depend, as in 
the two cases I have just narrated, upon their 
own seven senses, including common-sense and 
tact. 



Taufikia was reached at about half -past two the 
next morning. When I turned out of my cabin 
a pink dawn was showing behind the dom palms, 
while a warm, dust-laden wind whistled through 
them, telling of parched wilderness beyond. Taufi- 
kia is not a cheerful place. Some Sudanese troops 
in khaki which matched the ground were being 
drilled joylessly by an English officer in preparation 
for the Sirdar's visit, due in a day or two. The 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 169 

hot wind was enough to blow any one into a bad 
temper. 

We wooded at Khor Atar, having passed the 
mouth of the Sobat. A number of gaunt, wood-ash- 
besmeared phantoms sat in phalanxes on the 
shore, their thin knees up to their chins, their 
inevitable spears in their hands. The village was 
a replica of many others, but I noticed in par- 
ticular a straw-roofed mosque for the use of the 
Mohammedan contingent from Khartoum. It is 
this contingent who do the labour or rather the 
dilatory form of leisure which consists in passing 
logs along from the shore to the boat ; for the 
Shilluks and Dinkas scorn to labour, and merely 
form decorative spectators. So men are sent 
from Omdurman to each wooding station with 
their women-folk for this purpose. 

Serut flies began to be numerous, as the banks 
were thickly wooded, and the bitterns, pelicans, 
and other hosts of water-birds scarcely troubled 
to fly as we passed them, so accustomed were they 
to be undisturbed. Crocodiles abound in the 
river at this point, and several were shot at, some 
being wounded, whether mortally or not I cannot 
say. A green nenuphar floating down-stream was 



170 MY SUDAN YEAR 

pointed out to me. It looks like a little green 
cabbage and contains, I was told, hundreds of ants, 
who colonise on these water-plants. This nenu- 
phar, small as it is, is often the cause of obstruction, 
as it has long roots, which cling on in a shallow part 
of the river, forming an embryo island, which is 
quickly reinforced by small pieces of drifting sudd 
until a formidable obstacle is the result. A curious 
little wood beetle found on deck was also brought 
to me for inspection. This little insect has a 
square body and a big round head, with which 
he bores into wood, eating his way through with 
such a good appetite that he emerges quite four 
times the size that he went in. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

"TTTE awoke the next morning to find ourselves 
Y in the Bahr-el-Zeraf , or Eiver of the Giraffe, 
off the regular steamboat route at last, and brought 
up against the bank while the men went off to 
shoot. It is not a country in which Nature is in 
a glad or generous mood. Every growing thing is 
stunted, all vegetation is burnt and coarsened by 
the pitiless sun. Fires had done their devastating 
work as well, and the tall grass was charred and 
blackened, and the trees scorched where the quick 
bush fires had rushed past them. Here and there 
a green shoot showed that life was slowly reawaken- 
ing, and the downy fluff balls of the cassia hung 
on the low bushes. But the new leaves had been 
eaten by red-winged locusts, which whirred up 
heavily in their legions from the skeletons of 

bushes and trees as our footsteps disturbed 

171 



172 MY SUDAN YEAR 

them, with a sound like falling waters. The 
trunks of the sunt trees, ruddy as if with blood- 
stains, looked oddly fantastic in this desolation 
of drab and black ; and the ground was cracked 
and parched as if this were the shore of a river 
in Hades. 

The three guns returned with the heads and 
antlers of one water-buck, one tiang and two 
white-eared cob beautiful woodland creatures, 
whose nobility deserved a better fate. It gave 
one a pang to think of their widowed and soft-eyed 
does, for the great herds were so unafraid. They 
lifted their heads with mild surprise, and were 
slow to take alarm. If they had been shy, we 
should have had little chance of stalking them, 
for the noise of our steamer would have sent 
them fleetly into the long grass and thick under- 
wood. 

But though big game shooting may appear cruel, 
especially in the case of gazelle and small antelope, 
one cannot very well quarrel with the bona-fide 
sportsman who shoots for sport, takes his risks, 
and abides by the rules governing that sport, unless 
from the humanitarian standpoint, namely, that 
lack of meat should be the only valid excuse for 






TO THE SUDD AND BACK 173 

killing any animal. Museum collections are en- 
riched by carefully selected trophies, and the cause 
of science is served by the rifle. 

Unfortunately, the rules are not always kept. 
Every year reports come to hand of such and such 
a tourist who has been firing indiscriminately from 
the deck of the steamer into a herd of buffalo or 
elephant on the chance of shooting some dead, 
without troubling to follow up the wounded 
animals. Try as he will, Mr. Butler, the super- 
intendent of the game shooting, cannot stop these 
offences against the sporting instinct. In the 
majority of cases these big game hooligans are 
rich and influential people, and fines do not worry 
them. They pay up, and boast of " le sport " for 
the rest of their lives. One of the worst offenders 
of recent years was a certain titled person who 
returned to Khartoum with a bag of three elephants 
(only two being allowed on the licence), of which 
one was a male with 10-lb. tusks, one a cow, and 
the third a calf. To my own knowledge another 
man was let loose with a gun, a licence, and the 
best intentions, and told some one that he thought 
he had hit something, as he had seen blood 
about, but did not know whether his rifle was 



174 MY SUDAN YEAR 

sighted for a hundred or a thousand yards ! On 
being asked why he had not followed up the 
wounded antelope, he replied that he objected 
to the lions ! 

Had our larder been in want, the guinea-fowl 
which rose in flocks from the scrub as we churned 
the oily water with our stern wheel would have 
provided us with plenty. 

We had seen country over which fire was passing 
in the distance ; we now went through some reaches 
of the river about which flames leapt on either 
side at close quarters, crackling, Jiissing, devouring, 
and sending up thick smoke into the sky. The 
heat was fervid, the very wind was scorching, and 
bore sparks towards us. One realised what the 
Indian fakir suffers who lights fires in a circle 
around him and sits in the blazing sun. The only 
living thing we saw in this zone of fires, save the 
crocodiles which lay like logs half in and half out 
of the water, was a brightly-coloured bird, which 

Captain A called a firebird. It is so named 

because of its habit of following up these forest 
fires and feasting on the roasted grubs and other 
tit-bits in the black ruin. Here and there we came 
to a reach which the fires had spared, and all the 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 175 

way tall masses of umm suf and papyrus lined the 
banks, for every mile now brought us nearer the 
great swamp. At night the fires flickered all round 
the low horizon, the smell of burnt grass and wood 
was in our nostrils, and the taste of it on our lips. 
It was a scene which might have given Dante 
local colour for his " Inferno." 

The next day I awoke at sunrise and landed 

with Captain A and his shikari on the left 

bank, the other men and their shikaris choosing 
the right. Where we landed, the bushes were 
thick with weaver birds' nests, wonderful pieces 
of bird architecture, consisting of rushes and 
grasses interwoven together with such skill as to 
form a beautifully modelled ball, the opening 
being a small round hole just big enough to allow 
the little occupants to pass in and out. The tall 
grass had been burnt in patches, and our clothes, 
hands and faces, soon looked as though we had 
rubbed against a sheaf of charcoal pencils. Where 
the grass was not burnt it was often above our 
heads, coarsened and bleached by the sun, and 
here and there beaten down where some great 
beast had ploughed through it. The only way in 
which one could obtain a view of the country was 



176 MY SUDAN YEAR 

by climbing on to a tall ant-hill these achieve 
heights of four and five feet on an average thus 
rising above the grass. Then we found ourselves 
again in thick underwood, scarlet with the stems 
of the mimosa trees and tangled with thorns. The 
method of going was to creep forward with bent 
knees, so as to keep below the level of the grass ; 
but, though we sighted a buck in the distance, we 
did not arrive within shooting range. He got 
wind of us and disappeared. Occasionally we came 
on deep pit-like marks, showing that an elephant 
had passed this way when the ground was soft 
from the last rains, and here and there were spoor 
of hippopotami and giraffe. We returned at 
ten o'clock, to find that the others had already 
re-embarked, with the head of one fine water- 
buck. Moreover, they told us that they had 
actually sighted giraffe. 

The shikaris took the keenest interest in looking 
out for game, and their sharp eyes could detect a 
herd or single animal at a distance at which we 
were only able to distinguish objects with the aid 
of strong field-glasses. The little Habbania Arab 
was always alert, and it was his vanity to be first 
with the excited cry of " Tetel ! " or Til ! " or 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 177 

whatever he had sighted. He jumped about im- 
patiently till the guns started, and his face was 
one beam when they returned successful. Here is 
a list of the local names of bird and beast which 
may be useful to some sportsman travelling up- 
Nile: 



Elephant 


. FU 


Hippopotamus . 


. Grinti, grintia 


Crocodile 


. Timsah 


Lion 


. Asad or Dud 


Lioness . 


. Labwa 


Leopard . 


Nimr 


Monkey . . 


. Niss-Nass 


Baboon 


Girid or tigl (the "r" must be 




rolled) 


Buffalo . 


. Gamus 


Pig . . 


. Haluf, khanzir 


Wart-hog. 


. Haluf 


Hyena 


. Marfain, Dabd 


Eland 


Bouggd 


Water- buck 


. Katambiir 


White-eared Cob 


. Hamraia or Ttt 


Tiang 


. T&el 


Kudu 


Nydliit 


Mrs. Gray 


Abu-akk 


Rhinoceros 


Khar tit or Abu girin 


Ostrich 


. Na-aam 


Giraffe . . 


. Zeraf 


Hartebeest 


. T&el 


Roan antelope 


. Abu Urrf 


Gazelle . . 


. Ghazal 


Duck 


. Batt. or Wiz 


12 





178 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Goose . . . Wiz (plural Wizin) 

Whistling Teal . Batt 

Baleoniceps Bex or 

Shoebill Stork . Abu Markub 



Everything male is dakr, and female, 'ntaia or 
anas. 

A new type of incident was provided by the 
court martial on a small boy, who was found to 
be in possession of a watch-bracelet belonging to 
some one on board. The theft was discovered while 
the culprit was bathing, for the bracelet fell out 
of his belt. He gave the not very plausible ex- 
planation that he had bought it in Omdurman, 
but the theft was brought home to him. It was 
ordained that he should be whacked at the next 
wooding station, but I do not know if the sentence 
was ever carried out, though the small black culprit 
was forced to part with the bracelet and lived in 
fear for several days. The magpie instinct is 
always strong in these black urchins, and it is as 
well not to put temptation in their way. 

Later on in the day, there was a great fall in 
the temperature. The sudd was gradually closing 
in around us ; though the river itself was wide, the 
channel was narrow, and between us and firm 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 179 

ground was a swampy area of reeds. Telegraph 
wires showed that civilisation, even in this distant 
spot, was within reach, though the poles lurched 
tipsily forward in places where giraffes or elephants 
had scratched themselves against them, or heavy 
diving eagles had used them for a perch. Whistling 
teal passed over the boats in long lines, and we 
sighted again and again large herds of hartebeest, 
tiang and water-buck. The evening, though we 
were on the outskirts of the Great Bog, brought us 
no mosquitoes to speak of, though the buzz and 
hum of insect life was continuous, and fireflies 
sped through the air at dusk and sometimes 
alighted on deck. 

Nor did the next day bring a return of the great 
heat our maximum record in the shade was 86, 
which by comparison seemed almost cold. Early 
in the morning a boat was put off, and one of our 
party returned after an hour or two, with the 
heads of two water-buck and one tiang. The horns 
of the buck measured 28 inches and 29J inches 
respectively, and the tiang 20J from tip to tip. 
Our crew continued to give trouble. This time 
it was the smiling Sudani cook-lady, who had taken 
it into her many-plaited, well-greased head to fall 



180 MY SUDAN YEAR 

in love with a stoker on our steamer. The men 
on the nugger for which she cooked refused to 
allow her to invite her lover on to their boat, 
no doubt agreeing that the culinary art demands 
undivided attention. So she had refused to cook 
for them, and sat nursing an uncooked fish on 
her bare black knees, sobbing and wiping her eyes 
with a rag. The men appealed to authority, and 
she was told sternly that punishment should be 
her portion if she continued to mutiny, and that 
if she would not cook, neither should she eat. A 
morning's sulking and starvation brought her to 
her senses, and by the afternoon she was showing 
her beautiful rows of white teeth as before, and, 
to judge by her manner, bore no one any malice. 
We were in the heart of the sudd country at last. 
For miles at a time nothing broke the sea of 
undulating grasses but an occasional dom palm 
rising above the swamp, or grey ant-hills so smooth 
and hard that they often deceived us into thinking 
that they were the backs of elephant or rhinoceros. 
The sky was obscured by a malignant mist, the 
atmosphere damp, heavy and miasmic. We passed 
one curious village on an arm of dry land. Its 
naked inhabitants stood on a big, cone-shaped 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 181 

ant-hill to view us as we approached, their spears 
bristling upwards, and when we were within hail, 
they called out in welcome and informed us that 
there was plenty of game. They were probably in 
need of meat and hoped that we were a shooting 
party. But we steamed on, the wash from our 
progress rocking their dug-out canoes (made of 
hollowed tree trunks), and ambatches or craft 
constructed of faggots of ambatch. The ambatch 
tree grows in the water, and is very much thicker 
at the root than higher up, its stem tapering away 
abruptly as the lower branches are reached. It 
seldom reaches a height of more than three or four 
feet, but is prized for its light, tough wood. It 
flowers in February, and its blossom is bright 
yellow and fragrant, resembling a laburnum flower 
in shape, but growing singly on the hairy thorn- 
protected stem instead of in a down-drooping 
cluster. The leaf is pinnate. 

But neither beast nor man had real dominion 
here, for as I have said, this is the kingdom of the 
birds. Where there were trees they were white 
with snowy-plumaged herons and alive with 
flapping bodies. Water-fowl of all kinds were 
busy at their fishing, other bright-feathered birds 



182 MY SUDAN YEAR 

brushed the surface of the river in their pursuit of 
insects, the air was flagellated by hundreds of 
wings at a time. The calls and screams of the 
birds were of every note. They seemed to know 
no fear of us. One small bird with a pink breast 
and scarlet bill actually flew on board, and after 
hopping about and investigating things with his 
bright eyes, he decided to stay. We scattered a 
few crumbs for him, and the next day he grew so 
bold that he ventured on to our laps and into our 
hands. Then, suddenly and fearlessly, he decided 
he would be a passenger no longer, and, perching 
an instant on the rail, flew back to the swamp. 
Once we saw the rare baleoniceps rex, or shoe-bill 
stork, a big bird with a swollen bill of ridiculous 
dimensions, standing gravely on an ant-hill above 
the reeds, looking like a parody of himself. 

And once we passed a dead crocodile lying belly 
upwards, an ugly sight, his huge body swollen, 
green and loathsome through decomposition. As 
night drew on, the miasmic mist thickened, there 
was the smell of rank and decaying water-plants, 
the fireflies began their nightly flickering in and out 
of the forest of reeds, and frogs their evil chanting. 
Night- jars flitted across the river after flies, and 





THE DREDGER AT WORK. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 183 

the great marsh was full of mysterious sounds, 
an under-tone made up of a million tiny notes of 
infinitesimal grades, the voice of the silence, the 
song of the whispering swamp. 

A sharp bend in the river brought us sudden 
surprise. A few miles away over the darkened 
waste, and visible plainly in the vast monotony, 
was a lighted monster. It was a dredger, and 
by degrees we got up to the ungainly craft where 
she lay ready to begin work betimes the next 
morning, for these dredgers have a hard fight for 
it with the octopus. In the loneliness of this 
savage place there was something marvellously 
friendly in the sight of the lights and the sound of 
human speech. Her men came eagerly to the 
side, and an English voice that of the engineer 
in charge shouted out a greeting as we passed 
and the information that there were sandbanks 
ahead. That was all, and then the monster's 
lights nickered into a mere spark as we steamed 
slowly on our way. The man who had called out 

to us, Captain A told me, had once saved a 

native from a crocodile at the imminent risk of 
his own life. The natives respect him deeply, and 
his nickname amongst them is " Abu el Melek " 



184 MY SUDAN YEAR 

(Father of the King). They soon know how to 
measure the character of a man ; in these places 
of desolation little of a man's nature remains hid, 
for elemental things lie so close to the surface that 
the emergencies of daily life bring one into direct 
touch with them. 

That evening, owing to our late difficulties with 
the crew, the conversation fell on the uses and 
abuses of the " cat," or Jcurbag as it is called in 
Arabic. The opinion of the man with longest 
experience of the Sudan was that the natives usually 
prefer this punishment to having their pay docked 
or undergoing imprisonment. They regard a man 
who cries out under a flogging as a great coward, and 
are so proud of their powers of endurance that 
at Sudanese weddings two men will voluntarily 
flog each other till one gives in, the victor being 
given the title of akho benat (brother of the 
girls, or brave man). It is not an uncommon 
thing to see a Sudani's back badly scarred from 
such self-imposed beatings. Sudanese of all tribes 
make a boast of being able to bear pain without 
flinching. A Sudanese Arab brought into hospital 
with a diseased leg was told that he must have 
it cut off. " Hader " (I am ready), he replied. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 185 

" But," said the doctor, " you will not feel the 
pain, because we will give you a medicine to send 
you to sleep, and when you wake the leg will be 
gone." The patient indignantly refused to take 
any anaesthetic, and endured the operation without 
a moan or a shrinking. 



CHAPTEE XV 

TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 



Bang! Crash! We all hastily 
slipped on dressing-gowns and ran out into 
the dawn to see what had happened. It was 
nothing serious in the narrow channel the living- 
nugger had ground against the steamboat, and, 
being rotten, part of her side was splintered away. 
It was repaired by lashing on logs, and the sun 
got up in his strength over the wilderness of sudd. 
It was all as flat as a billiard table, and of a bronzy 
green, miles and miles of whispering reeds bending 
before each wind like waves of the sea, uninhabited 
except for the birds and the insects and the slow 
horrible beasts that live in the slime. The hippo- 
potamus is the friendliest, and of his kind we saw 
a big herd, which disappeared like magic as soon 
as we had shot into their midst. 
While repairs were in progress we lay to by a 

186 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 187 

number of ambatch trees growing in the water 
which were full of weavers' nests. I was enabled 
to get a good photograph of these, which was 
afterwards sent to the Budapest Museum. Skin- 
ners were busy upon the roof of the injured nugger, 
and the odours borne from it were not altogether 
fragrant, for the meat of the animals being the 
perquisite of the shikaris, strips of water-buck 
and tiang had been hung all round the iron netting 
and on every available space, while in the centre 
the professional taxidermist cured the skins and 
skulls with alum, pepper and salt. One would 
expect decomposition to set in quickly in such 
heat, but, strangely enough, the meat has no time 
to go bad ; it is sun-dried in a few hours, and when 
it has hardened to the consistency of leather, can 
be put away in a dry place and kept for months. 
The shikaris doubtless were enabled to earn a 
comfortable sum of money by disposing of the 
meat when they returned to Omdurman at the 
end of the trip, as dried meat commands a good 
price. 

At lunch time we came upon the second dredger, 
and as it was daylight we could examine her. She 
was visjHe a long way off over the flat expanse of 



188 MY SUDAN YEAR 

green, and when the winding river had brought us 
up to her we stopped alongside. She had the usual 
complement of engineers three Englishmen 
and a crew of fifty natives ; and the upper deck 
was enclosed entirely in mosquito wiring, giving it 
the appearance of a giant meat-safe. She was 
working, and was of the type known as the " grab 
dredger/' that is to say, she carried a huge crane 
in front, which dropped a carriage, with opening 
teeth like an enormous mouth, into the sudd. 
The teeth descended, closed, and when the carriage 
was lifted aloft once more with its dripping burden, 
the crane began to swing round, and the mass was 
deposited on the widening bank of swamp, while 
muddy water eddied into the space which it had 
lately occupied. The " grab " lifts about a ton 
and a half at a time. 

The engineers came to the side to give us a 
welcome, attired in faultless white duck. Was 
there ever such a nation as the English ! Men of 
Latin or German nationalities, living in the solitude 
of the swamp for months at a time, sweltering 
in damp heat, and rarely seeing a white face, would 
have succumbed to carelessness of dress, if not to 
actual dirt and slovenliness. Yet here were these 







A VIEW OF THE CELEBRATED "CUT" BETWEEN THE BAHR-EL-ZERAF 
AND THE BAHR-EL-GEBEL. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 189 

three exiles, taken unawares, discovered in clean 
collars ! I commented on the fact to an English- 
man, who made the reply, " If they began to let 
those things slide, it would mean letting all self- 
respect slip. When a man is left alone the pyjama 
habit is very easy to acquire and very difficult to 
get rid of." So much psychology enters into the 
toilet, that I think he was perfectly right. 

They permitted us to buy some coal from them, 
two coal barges lying at anchor beside them in the 
river ; and when we had taken in about a ton, we 
bade them farewell and paddled our winding way 
through the interminable sea of weeds, more 
monotonous than any canal country in Holland, 
more desolate than any veldt, too hot to possess 
the beauties of blue sky and white clouds, too 
damp to invigorate ; the very wind fever-stricken 
and the green a mockery. Nothing but a heat- 
grey firmament above, and from horizon to horizon 
as far as the eye could reach waving rushes, and 
again waving rushes, and again. Nothing, that 
is to say, but the birds. For they provide the 
variety ; screaming, chirping, swooping, wading, 
their activities never cease, even in this wilderness 
of miasmic sleep. 



190 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Soon after our encounter with the dredger we 
turned into the famous cut between the Bahr-el- 
Zeraf and the Bahr-el-Gebel. It has been till now 
but little used, and we were certainly the first 
boat carrying white women to go through. The 
rich grey earth was thrown up into a high bank on 
either side, but the channel was too narrow to 
allow all three boats to move abreast ; accordingly, 
the living-nugger was towed behind. As we 
neared the Bahr el Gebel we saw a big crocodile 
on the bank, her green-grey length extended in 
the sun. There were two reports, and at the 
second the first had simply waked the great body 
into lashing energy she kicked her life out and 
lay still. 

We brought the steamer to a standstill, the 
baharis got ashore, and, running along the bank, 
slipped ropes around the carcass and dragged it 
through the water on to the nugger. Here it was 
skinned ; and the meat, being cut into strips, 
joined the rest in the dry ing- ground on the roof 
of the living-nugger, and very unpleasant and 
fishy was the smell that was wafted to us from 
this, as well as from the skin. The best way to 
skin a crocodile is to open the body at the side, 




THE MEAT HUNG OUT TO DRY. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 191 

as the belly and back form the best pieces of 
leather for tanning. The crocodiles are thickest 
near the villages, for they grow very cunning in 
lying in wait for the children who come to fill their 
water pots, or the girls at their washing. Once 
they have seized their victim by a limb or a piece 
of clothing, they drag him under and drown him 
first ; then eat him piecemeal. 

The Bahr-el-Gebel is broader and straighter than 
the Bahr-el-Zeraf, and is lined on either side with 
dark green papyrus, the feathery heads growing 
as high as seven, eight or nine feet above the 
water, and, reflected on the perfect mirror of the 
oily surface, looked twice that length. Mirrored, 
too, was the perfect sunset that dyed the river 
with gold and scarlet, argosies of rose-caught cloud 
in the serenity of gold-green space. There was 
no need to look upward, a duplicate heaven lay 
in the water, unrippled except where we had 
disturbed it. It was wonderful as a revelation of 
the magic of atmosphere and time. It is only 
when such a vast canvas as a swamp or a desert 
is spread before her that Nature, the artist, is 
given her full opportunity. Then she makes of 
these unfavoured wastes living jewels so fair that 



192 MY SUDAN YEAR 

one forgets the unlovely day in the mystery and 
beauty of its close, and in memory the swamp 
and the desert draw a man's soul with an odd 
affection, however he may abuse them when he 
sojourns upon them. 

Our little Habbania shikari was discovered 
opening a piece of sackcloth in the twilight, smooth- 
ing the sand contained therein, dimpling it with 
his fingers, and gazing intently at it. I'Tow this is 
a method of fortune-telling * practised by the 
Arabs from Arabia to Morocco, and accordingly, 
we bade him come on to the steamer deck to 
tell fortunes for us. First of all he denied 
being in possession of any sand, but when 
pressed admitted being proficient in the art of 
divination. 

The method is simple. The inquirer first places 
his hand, palm downward, on the sand, or holds 
a handful to his heart. The sand is then levelled, 
and the fortune-teller, using his fingers quickly 
and at random, moves his hand from right to left, 
touching it sometimes with two, sometimes with 
three, sometimes with four fingers. This he does 
seven times, so that the sand at the end of the 

* Darb-er-Raml. 




CUTTING UP THE CROCODILE. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 193 

performance is dimpled in such a way as the 
following : 

1st line 

; 

2nd line :::: 

3rd line { 
(thus for seven lines). 

He then adds up the evens and odds, putting the 
result at the left of the lines ; thus the first line 
made up of three evens and four odds would result 
in one odd, written by a single finger-point ; the 
second line of four evens and three odds in an 
even, expressed by two finger-points, and so on. 
From these calculations he makes certain deduc- 
tions, that the inquirer will be fortunate, travel, 
make money, or continue in good health. I 
asked him whether his own fortune in the sand 
had been favourable. He replied No that his 
inquiry had told him that his bullocks had been 
taken sick and that his brother was ill. We tried 
to comfort him by saying that it was probably not 
true. He replied that when another brother had 
died, he had seen it in the sand. 
Night had fallen, and the air, laden with hu- 
13 



194 MY SUDAN YEAR 

midity and the vapours of the great marsh, was 
cold and odorous of decaying water- vegetation. 
We were in the heart of the mosquito country, but 
these tormentors, protected as we were by veils, 
gloves and mosquito boots, did not get much 
satisfaction out of us. 

The next morning found us still moving steadily 
through the papyrus country. But, soon after 
breakfast, the colour of the swamp changed 
abruptly. A devastating grass fire had passed 
over it, blackened fields of it swayed in the wind, 
the graceful glory of plumed head and straight 
green stem had been turned into a mere wisp of 
fibre at the top of a charred straw. From the 
funereal waste of burnt papyrus, we came to the 
burning papyrus. The tall rushes were flaming 
close to the water's edge, indeed, we were in some 
concern at the sparks, though we kept in the middle 
of the channel. It was a wonderful sight, flames 
and smoke leapt sky-high, and a roaring, crackling 
sound was emitted as the beautiful green papyrus 
was licked up. The fire travelled at right angles 
to the river. We were glad to leave it behind. 

The expanse of reed now became occasionally 
broken by ant-hills and a low tree here and there. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 195 

This was elephant country, and once a shikkari 
raised a cry of " Fil ! " bringing us to an expectant 
stop for a while ; but it was a false alarm, and in 
any case it was too marshy to land. There was 
little current ; the calm water reflected everything 
on its motionless surface. So perfect was the 
illusion that the night hawks, shaped like aeroplanes, 
darting over the river in search of supper, seemed 
to move in pairs, one above, one below. 

As night came on, we came upon the experimental 
station belonging to the Suddite Company. It 
was too dark to see anything, but the big barges 
upon which the party were encamped showed 
lights, and the overseer got up from bed and came 
over to us in a boat. 

We went on shore the next morning to see the 
sudd-cutting party at work. The papyrus and 
grasses had already been cut down on the marshy 
ground immediately by the nugger, and the sun- 
bleached stubble gave fairly firm walking, though 
in places the water oozed up above one's boots. 
To right and left was the forest of high papyrus, 
and on slightly higher ground in the centre of the 
clearing was a heap of it drying in the sun, and 
beside it a hand-worked machine, like a sheep's 



196 MY SUDAN YEAR 

cake-crusher, to chop it up. The papyrus had 
been cut by hand underneath the water by the 
heterogeneous set of coloured ruffians who had been 
brought from Khartoum for the purpose. It was 
not an inviting spot in which to work, and there 
was the constant danger of crocodiles and snakes. 
However, the men were apparently busy enough, 
and we watched them putting the dried papyrus 
through the machine. The drying process takes 
about a fortnight, and after it has been chopped, 
the sudd is sent up to Khartoum. In the factory 
there it is disintegrated to what is almost a powder 
before it is ready to be subjected to the final pro- 
cesses which are to reduce it into briquettes or 
paper. We were informed that the cutting is 
eventually to be done by motors working saws 
underneath the water, and there is to be a factory 
on the spot finally selected, instead of in Khartoum. 
One of these motor saws was shown to us ; it was 
not, however, working. The place was not without 
flowers. There was a little group of acacias in 
full bloom, and the morning glories, pretty slatterns, 
twined themselves in and out where they could. 
We went on the larger of the barges tethered to 
the shore, and were greeted by smiles from the 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 197 

women, some of whom were busying themselves 
with making a species of porridge with water and 
durra. This dish should really be made with milk, 
but the one emaciated and oddly built cow on 
shore was not apparently capable of producing 
any. All the women wore their hair in the usual 
fashion of a shock of tiny plaits. One girl was 
quite pretty and bare to the waist without suffering 
from modesty. Their gums and lips were dyed 
blue, a piece of coquetry which did not enhance 
the beauty of their appearance in European eyes. 
A fat brown baby, who rejoiced in many wristlets, 
anklets and amulets, proved to be a particularly 
engaging person ; he smiled, played, danced, and 
pretended to be shy just like any other baby, 
and his mother was obviously bursting with pride. 
We did not linger long, but got aboard again, 
and by 10.30 had entered Lake No. The papyrus 
here gives way to umm suf again, and the flat 
wastes on either side were all but treeless. Little 
brown islands floated on the water, the sky was 
heavy and grey, and the air damp, hot, and op- 
pressive. These suddscapes are mostly in tones of 
silver and bronze ; the colour has been burnt and 
washed out of them. 



CHAPTER XVI 
TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

"TTTE were now in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the River 
of the Gazelle, that stream of many twists 
and turns called by the natives " the handwriting 
of the Englishman/' because of its sinuous course. 
An Englishman on board had spent many months 
in this district as inspector, and told me something 
of the customs and superstitions of the inhabitants. 
There are no rainmakers in the Bahr-el-Ghazal but, 
and especially in the western districts, medicine 
men and fikis, or religious mendicants and teachers, 
exercise a strong influence over the inhabitants. 
The fikis write charms against every evil that 
threatens mankind, such as charms to ensure that 
one will not be eaten by crocodiles, charms to 
prevent a wife from being unfaithful, charms 
to preserve cattle from disease, and so on. So 
numerous grow these charms, that local sultans 

198 





[5. Dunn, Esq. 

THE GRAYE OF A NIAM-NIAM CHIEF IN THE FORESTS OF THE 
SOUTHERN HAHR-EI.-GHAZAL, NEAR MERIDI. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 199 

usually engage a special attendant to carry 
them. 

The medicine men profess to heal by magic, and 
their methods are impressive. They first build 
a very thick zariba, or barricade, about a spot, 
take the patient into it, and keep him there for 
three days. Then they produce shards and stones, 
which they pretend to have taken out of the body, 
and exhibit them to the wondering relatives. 
Whether the patient eventually dies or not, his 
credulous friends are satisfied that the best has 
been done for him. These medicine men are 
brought into requisition for taking omens, and for 
trials by ordeal by means of fire, crocodiles, and 
similar tests. Divination by chickens is also 
practised by them. 

The dead are buried in different positions, accord- 
ing to the tribe ; but an almost universal super- 
stition is to point out a grave with doubled fingers, 
lest the ghost of the deceased should burn off the 
finger-tips. The tree of the village is, for some 
obscure reason, usually considered sacred, and 
this is why any important councils are held, or 
oaths administered, beneath its shade. 

Marriage customs, too, depend on the tribe. 



200 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The Bundars (near relatives of the Niam-Niams) 
marry by exchange, but the English inspectors are 
doing their best to stop this custom, and tell them 
that they must obtain a Government permission 
to marry, or else, if there is subsequent trouble 
due to a dispute as to dowry, or the wife's running 
away, the Government will do nothing to help 
them. Natives are very ready to apply for assist- 
ance in the case of a runaway wife, so that the 
prudent bridegroom often travels hundreds of 
miles to get the proper equivalent of " marriage 
lines." 

The Ferogeh tribe, in the western district of 
the Bahr-el-Ghazal, have their head-quarters at 
Raga, which is also a Government station. This 
tribe is composed of Moslems, who are said to have 
come through from Mecca by way of Darfur, 
conquering as they came. Their Sultan is the 
most powerful in the district, and the Ferogeh were 
never enslaved by the Dervishes, although their 
neighbours, the surrounding Feratit tribes, were 
constantly raided. Their Mohammedan principles 
do not prevent them from taking as many wives 
as they please, and the late Sultan had twenty- 
five. Moreover, they have some curious customs 




[5. Dunn, Esq. 



SULTAN YANGO, OF THE MEKIDI, A CHIEF OF A TRIBE OF ZANDES OR 
NIAM-NIAMS (BAHR-EL-GHAZAL). 

(Observe the plaited beard, about nine inches long. This was pulled off by an angry wife 
about a fortnight after the photograph was taken.) 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 201 

which remind one of the practices of the 
Sabians. 

For instance, in their villages there are five or 
six tukls in a hosh or enclosure, and on New Year's 
Day each hosh is beaten furiously with clubs or 
staves to chase out the devils. When the devils 
are supposed to be expelled, the whole village clears 
out its fires, carrying every live ember or spark 
down to the river, leaving no vestige of fire in 
any tukl. The fire is thrown into the water, and 
wood is kindled by rubbing sticks one against 
another, the virgin fire so created being carried 
back to the village in triumph. The men and 
women in two separate bands, men together and 
women together, then purify themselves by bathing 
in the river. 

At its junction with Lake No, the Bahr-el-Ghazal 
is much narrower than the Bahr-el-Zeraf, and 
game appeared so plentiful that had we stopped 
for every herd of waterbuck, gazelle or white-eared 
cob that we saw, we should never have got on at 
all. But, more wonderful still, was a herd of giraffe 
which moved literally in hundreds against the 
sky-line. Even here, in this country of great 
beasts, the giraffe had an oddly archaic look. It 



202 MY SUDAN YEAR 

was reported that a certain giraffe of snowy 
whiteness had been seen in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, 
and a reward was offered for him alive or dead, 
but we did not come across him. A giraffe is not 
easy to transport when he is full grown. A certain 
official of Khartoum had one sent him by some one 
up river in the spring of 1911. The animal arrived 
in the custody of two Arabs, who claimed large 
payment. The unhappy recipient did not know 
what to do. To send it down to the Cairo Zoo 
would have cost a small fortune, and meanwhile 
the giraffe ate him out of house and home with 
its voracious appetite. I do not know what eventu- 
ally happened to it perhaps it was killed. The 
privilege of shooting a giraffe (in addition to a 50 
licence) costs 20 ; to take him alive out of the 
Sudan means paying an export tax of 24E. 

Hippos abounded, and we also saw many whale- 
headed storks, who moved about with an air of 
antediluvian dignity, secure in the fact that the 
law of the land forbids sportsmen to shoot at them. 
We twice came to a halt that the guns might go 
ashore, and on one occasion, instead of leaving 
the boats, as the heat was excessive, I stayed to 
watch our Arab fisherman. This Sphinx-like in- 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 203 

dividual supplied us daily throughout the trip with 
fresh Nile fish, and never wasted an opportunity. 
No matter why we had stopped for wooding, or 
game, or disaster, he went gravely to the end of 
the nugger, cast out his net, and drew it in after 
a moment or two with its freight of fish. The net, 
which was circular and weighted with lead, was 
thrown forwards by a swing of the left shoulder, 
spreading as it fell, and when the string was drawn 
became a trap inside which the captives struggled 
and flapped as they were dragged on board. Then 
he squatted to make his selection, hurling the 
useless fish aside with unconcern as to whether 
they fell into the water or on to the bank. 

We had our camp beds brought on deck in 
order to enjoy the coolness of the night, and so 
few mosquitoes were there that our nets were 
scarcely needed. The crew slept where they 
listed, and if any one awoke at midnight, about a 
dozen mysterious bundles were visible lying here 
and there on the deck floor, so closely shrouded 
that they looked like corpses tumbled out of 
coffins, or huge white chrysalides. Just before 
dawn the " corpses " came silently to life, and each, 
as he rubbed his eyes open in the faint light, turned 



204 MY SUDAN YEAR 

his face Meccawards and went through the prostra- 
tions of the morning Namaz, for the bahari are 
devout fellows, and precise in their prayers, as 
becomes good Moslems. Then the chatter began 
on the nugger and the pleasing smell of coffee 
arose as the women brewed it in the little earthen- 
ware pots, and served it out in small handleless 
cups. Thus their day had begun. Our method 
of beginning with morning tea, the queue at the 
bathroom, elaborate dressing in a hot cabin, and 
plentiful breakfast, was in direct contrast ; for, 
in spite of our surroundings, with the usual fatuity 
of the English, we persisted in living at hotel 
pitch. The excellent Italian chef contrived several 
courses for each meal ; tinned vegetables were 
cooked with such skill as to disguise their origin ; 
and all the luxurious fictions of civilisation were 
kept up, although the crocodile slept on the bank, 
the elephant, lion and hippopotamus roamed in 
the scrub beyond, and a people, so simple that 
they scorned even the figleaf apron of their fore- 
father Adam, peered at us from the ant-hills. 



We came to a stop early, so that the men might 
shoot before the great heat of the day. Large 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 205 

blue, sweet-scented water lilies floated on the 
river, and a white-flowering tree grew close to 
the bank where they landed. For the rest there 
was the usual tangle of bleached grass varied by 
miserable trees, and near the water a fringe of the 
tall dignified papyrus. The two guns brought four 
fine heads of white-eared cob between them, and 
reported that the herds were so tame that even 
after they had been fired upon they did not move 
away, but lifted surprised heads and mild eyes 
from their cropping. 

About midday the river became friendlier in 
appearance, and here and there woods descended 
to the water's edge. This was succeeded again by 
papyrus country, broken occasionally by lonely 
dom palms and calm lagoons like liquid mirrors. 
In the afternoon we came on a group of some thirty 
or forty Nuers on the bank. Some of them had 
crowded on to an ant-hill, so as to get a better 
view of us ; figures as straight as their spears and 
almost as lean. We landed for a minute : the 
ambatches and dug-outs moored to the bank 
showed that they had paddled down from a village 
near by. They were wild and unkempt-looking 
creatures, all armed, some men carrying several 



206 MY SUDAN YEAR 

spears at once ; and they did not look very friendly. 
A trader, an Arab living at the station above, was 
with them and acted as our interpreter, for these 
men could speak nothing but their own dialect. 
Through this medium we learnt that they had 
come on a hippo hunt, and when we tried to buy 
a particularly fine spear, we found that its owner 
did not understand the use of money, except as 
metal to be beaten into spear-heads. Why, there- 
fore, should he accept it in exchange for his spear ? 
Neither did these Arcadians deign to accept the 
beads which we tendered instead, beads being the 
usual currency when money is not understood. 
They said that they did not wish to part with 
their spears and that they had no wants except 
cattle-hides. If we had cattle-skins to dispose 
of, they could offer durra in exchange. I was 
surprised at a cattle-owning tribe being in want of 
skins, but I was told that they never kill their 
cattle, and only get a skin when an animal dies 
from natural causes. 

One man, apparently their headman, acted as 
spokesman through the interpreter, the other 
gaunt, shock-headed skeletons crowded round and 
listened, their lower jaws falling open with amaze- 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 207 

mentj and their brows deeply wrinkled as those of 
monkeys. Clothes, they wore none ; though one 
or two men had adorned themselves with the skin 
of a small animal of the size of a stoat. Others 
boasted a string of beads, others wore nothing but 
a single bead secured round their waists by a strip 
of hide-like string. Brass bracelets in fifties at 
a time seemed to be fashionable, and wooden beads 
the size of a small walnut. Their coiffures would 
have won a gasp from the most tousled impresario. 
Some wore their hair fixed into a harlequin peak 
or horn stiffened into shape by means of a paste 
made of clay and cow's dung, which process after 
a month is supposed to colour the hair red. Others 
had seemingly passed through this stage, and their 
heads were an unkempt mop of yellowish red. 
One man, perhaps just emerged from the harlequin 
chrysalis, wore one lock in a straight, soaring, 
brush-like tuft, the rest of his hair being matted 
closely to his head. 

A few of their women had accompanied them, 
and these were plumper and comelier than the 
men. The unmarried girls were stark naked, the 
matrons covered their hips and breasts with skins. 
I presented one smiling dame with a bead necklace, 



208 MY SUDAN YEAR 

but the headman came forward and took it out of 
her hands for himself. I remonstrated with him 
by means of the interpreter, whereupon he hung 
it around the woman's neck with a good grace, 
postponing his intention of annexing it till we 
were out of sight. 

We steamed on drowsily into the heat of the 
day, which became sultry. Ninety-eight in the 
shade is cool when one sits in a house, but in the 
semi-shelter of a covered deck it was sweltering, 
even when the canvas wind-awnings were kept 
soaked with water by diligent natives. We passed 
herd after herd of gazelle and waterbuck, but 
did not stop for them, nor trouble to shoot the 
leisurely hippopotami that raised dripping flat- 
skulled heads to gaze at us. The crocodiles were 
fired at, but we did not wait to pick them up 
the one crocodile skin we already had was trying 
enough to the nose when the wind blew across 
from the nugger. 

An hour before sunset every one on the boat 
awoke into activity and excitement, for a herd of 
" Mrs. Gray's " cob was seen peacefully grazing 
close to the bank. The pretty and rare creatures 
were scarcely alarmed, but the steam escape which 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 209 

whistled inopportunely sent most of them trotting 
off gently. The rest went on feeding without 
fear. The ground was very marshy ; such an 
opportunity was not to be resisted, however, and 
after exploring the banks in a small boat, Captain 

D and Captain N found a tongue of hard 

ground. They tossed for first shot, and as Captain 

D won, he climbed on to an ant-hill, which lifted 

him above the grass, which stood seven feet high, 
and taking aim at 320 yards, shot the creature 
he had selected, a fine buck, stone-dead. We 
who were watching saw the whole performance, 
but when the shikaris were sent into the long 
grass to hunt for the animal's body, it had grown 
so dusk as to make it a difficult task to find any- 
thing in the high growth and swampy soil. We 
directed them as well as we could by pointing the 
direction from the deck of the ship, but they were 
only able to see us by leaping upwards or standing 
upon any ant-hill they might come across. Be- 
sides, they were often wading waist deep in water, 
which did not render their task easier. It was our 
little fortune-telling Arab who eventually found 
the fallen buck, and raised a joyful shout ; the 
others then joined him, and by the last rosy light 
14 



210 MY SUDAN YEAR 

of sunset they bore the carcass over the swamp 
and on to the boat, the Arabs singing songs of 
triumph in chanted chorus. We celebrated the 
death of the Mrs. Gray after our fashion with 
champagne at dinner, and before long the poor 
beast was skinned and the rails of the nugger 
decorated with strips of dripping red meat, after 
our chef had selected what he wanted. 

Perhaps the smell of fresh blood attracted the 
mosquitoes, for they came in their legions. The 
sportsman is limited to one Mrs. Gray. 

" It is a good thing," said one of the three women 
passengers on board, as she slew three at a blow, 
" that we are not limited to one mosquito ! " 



CHAPTEK XVII 
TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

T WAS awakened in the night for as usual I 
slept in the open by a terrific grunting, 
snorting and splashing, close, as it seemed, to 
my head. When I rubbed my eyes open I realised 
that it was caused by a difference of opinion be- 
tween two hippopotami who were fighting each 
other in the rushes by the bank. In this part of 
the river the reis did not venture to travel by 
night for fear of missing the channel. I would 
have given a great deal to witness that 
uncouth combat, but as it was pitchy dark and 
very hot, I lay still instead and listened. If the 
hippopotami were the principal performers in a 
strange duo-concerto, there was a vast orchestra 
to accompany them. The frogs in this marsh of 
leagues and furlongs kept up a continual croaking, 

harsh, strident, discordant, as if each frog of many 

211 



212 MY SUDAN YEAR 

millions were striving to produce an individual and 
assertive note. Above this hovered a thin, faint 
veil of sound, so continuous as to be almost a 
silence the hum of the night-flies, the mosquitoes, 
the sand-flies, and the multitude of insects that 
live in the miasma and flourish in the rotting 
vegetation of the Great Bog. Occasionally there 
were other noises, rustlings as of trodden rushes, 
the squelching mad$ by some big creature at its 
watering, the cries of night-birds, mysterious 
coughs, splutterings, or cracklings, which told us 
that the sudd was as awake by night as it was by 
day, and that under cover of the darkness the 
life of beast, bird, and reptile proceeded as though 
we had never intruded into their sanctuary. 

At dawn every one was astir while the sky was 
still petal-pink and dusky, and before seven Captain 

N and Captain A put ashore in the 

dinghy to endeavour to get their Mrs. Gray apiece. 

Captain N killed at once, and his shikari 

was so overjoyed, that he burst into loud shouts 
of " Taala, Taala ! " (Come, come !) though Captain 

A was stalking the buck he had picked out 

at a small distance away. For this piece of in- 
discretion the too exuberant shikari was severely 




^1 o 

o S 



2* 
St 

K 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 213 

reprimanded when he reached the boat, and his 
comrades promptly made a song about his mis- 
behaviour which made him abashed for some time 

after. However, Captain A was soon equally 

successful, killing his buck by a shot in the neck, 
and the animals were dragged on board by the 
men with rejoicing. The horns of the one measured 
28 inches long and 19 inches span, and of the other 
29J inches long and 16 inches span. To have shot 
three good head of these rare animals within 
twenty-four hours was considered an achievement. 
The aspect of the banks now changed rapidly ; 
they became thickly wooded in fact, so different 
was it to the barren sudd country we had left 
behind us, that we might have easily imagined 
ourselves in the Thames, with fat pasture land 
running down to the reed-fringed water. Had 
such an illusion existed, it would soon have been 
dispelled, for every now and again we came on 
Nuers, slim gentry daubed with clay and naked 
save for a bracelet of elephant ivory, standing on 
the ant-hills which are the conning towers of this 
district, to watch us pass. We were in need of 
fuel, and the bahari, when questioned if a wooding 
station were near, replied with true Sudanese 



214 MY SUDAN YEAR 

vagueness, " Baid shwoya " (A little far). It is 
almost impossible to get a Sudanese to calculate 
a distance. 

Euphorbia trees grew plentifully by the river 
(these trees yield the poison with which the warrior 
envenoms his arrows) ; and by them grew the 
tamar hindi or tamarinds, with their vivid green 
foliage. Sunbirds flashed crimson, teal flew up 
in whirring flocks, landrails, peewits and long-legged 
water-birds, disturbed by our churning wheel, rose 
as we passed or watched us from the banks. The 
atmosphere was less lethargic ; we had left the 
region of desolation behind us. 

At one o'clock we steamed past a picturesque 
village (Ghabat-el-Arab). Its outskirts were com- 
posed of small huts constructed like mole-hills, 
of mud with holes on the top through which 
the householder crawls down into the dwell- 
ing. There were tukls too, and by the water's 
edge grew the village tree, in the shade of 
which many of the inhabitants were seated. The 
wooding station was below, in the Bahr-el-Arab, 
so we turned off into that river, and came to a halt 
by the familiar stacks of logs. There was a crowd 
of women on the banks, chiefly natives of Omdur- 




THE HARLEQUIN COIFFURE OF THE XUER WARRIOR. 
(The other warrior has dyed his hair red.) 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 215 

man, sent up with their husbands by the Govern- 
ment, and these squatted on the ground and 
offered cakes of tamarind, honey, durra bread, eggs, 
and so on, in exchange for money, meat, and other 
eatables. One little woman told us that she was 
a Dinka from a village up-country, and that years 
ago she had been carried off by slave-raiders and 
sold in Alexandria. Under our rule she returned 
to Omdurman, married and came up-river with her 
husband. She wore a lump of crocodile musk, 
much prized on account of its perfume, as the 
central ornament of a necklace. 

Some Nuers, with their usual contempt for work, 
leant up against the pile of wood and looked on, 
some with their hair moulded into a horn, others 
wearing the usual Golliwog tangle. I was told by 

Captain A , who has had a great deal to do 

with this tribe, that the three deep furrows in the 
forehead which give the braves such an anxious 
expression, are due to incisions made in the skin, 
as the wrinkles so formed are considered an adorn- 
ment. One man wore a rope anklet, this being a 
sign of mourning for a relative. Another, an aged 
man who was the headman of the village we had 
just passed, bore in his hand a stick crooked at 



216 MY SUDAN YEAR 

both ends the kuggur magic stick or wand of 
authority of his tribe. It was decorated with 
rings of white metal and brass, and was altogether 
an impressive object. When I approached him 
to inspect it, he held up one hand sideways for 
some time in greeting, the other being engaged 
with a big knobkerry or bludgeon, and several 
spears. His wife, naked except for a fringe around 
her waist, bore his pipe and squatted at his side. 
His attendants stood like slim black statues, the 
left foot supported against the right knee, which is 
the custom of all the riverine people, and gives 
them a resemblance to water-birds. 

The ceremonial stick to which I have referred 
is brought into requisition for public fetes, such as 
a village marriage ; and a wedding was probably 
the cause of its appearance in this case. It is 
accredited with magic properties, and represents 
the luck of the tribe. 

The wooding process had been much enlivened 
by the antics of one huge black porter, who, ex- 
cited by merissa, performed a comic dance, to the 
huge enjoyment of our baharia ; and as we had 
dispensed largesse in the form of blue beads, we 
left a very smiling crowd behind us when we 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 217 

steamed away, this time with the current, for we 
had reached the farthest point of our journey, and 
now were homeward bent. 

But we stopped for a few moments at Ghabat-el- 
Arab, tempted by its beauty. It was a cleanly 
little village, and the straw tukls were well built, 
many of them being decorated by an ostrich egg 
placed on the roof. The people seemed friendly 
and interested ; a crowd of them stood under the 
sacred tree as we landed, men and women to- 
gether. The women were for the most part clad 
only in the string fringe about the loins, but a few 
of the married women wore goatskins behind em- 
broidered with cowrie shells and fastened to their 
waists like an apron worn backwards. A few less 
coquettish but more sophisticated ladies wore a 
loin-cloth of blue cotton, and flung a tobe of the 
same material around themselves at the approach 
of a stranger. 

One mother, wearing a string fringe or rahat, 
was crooning to her baby in front of her tukl, a 
bonny, plump man-child of a month old, its neck 
hung round with charms. She was pleased to 
hold it up that we might admire it, for motherhood 
is the same all the world over, and black babies 



218 MY SUDAN YEAR 

have just the same tricks and instincts as their 
white cousins. I noticed that a straw palisading 
divided the village into twisted streets, and that 
these alleys often ended abruptly in a blank wall 
or zariba, possibly in order to mislead an attacking 

force. Captain A said that if the local Sultan, 

an old friend of his, had happened to be in the 
village, he would have had to submit to a spit in 
the face, as that form of salutation is considered 
a great honour. The ordinary mode of greeting 
a friend is to hold up the hand as high as the 
head, with the five fingers spread, or to embrace 
his shoulders, clasping each alternately.* Once 
is not considered enough, the ceremony must be 
repeated many times before the demands of 
politeness are satisfied. 

The thermometer had registered 100 in the 
shade during the day, and at night, so hot was it, 
that I found it in my heart to envy the hippos 
which were to be heard gambolling and snorting 
in the water. 

The next day was equally hot. We sighted 

* " The attitude of respect differs in each of these (Nuer) tribes ; 
in one it is sitting, in another crouching with bent shoulder, and 
BO on " (Captain O'Sullivan's Report). 




GHABAT-EL-ARAB. 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 219 

some Mrs. Gray during the morning, but as our 
limit had been reached, there was no object in 
landing for them. Our real hope was to get 
elephant. We had been for many days in elephant 
country, and though we had seen plenty of spoor, 
and had several false alarms, we had not yet come 
into direct contact with that monarch of big game. 
Therefore there was great excitement when one of 
the shikaris, scanning the brown, scorched tangle 
of underwood about lunch-time, gave vent to a 
long thin cry of " Fil ! Fil ! " 

We all came scrambling up the stairs to the top 
deck armed with field-glasses, and, sure enough, 
against the horizon in the universal yellowy brown 
of the scrub some miles away, something was 
moving faintly visible, something big. It was 
undoubtedly a herd of elephants. Lots had already 
been drawn as to which two of the three guns should 
land, for it is not wise to hunt the wild elephant 

in large parties. Accordingly, Captain A and 

Captain N , being the fortunate ones, started 

at once with their shikaris. Captain N had 

never been on an elephant shoot before, but 

Captain A was an old hand. It is a form of 

sport not unattended by grave danger, so we who 



220 MY SUDAN YEAR 

were on the boat listened attentively for the 
shots. In the meanwhile I went on shore. The 
ground was grey and deeply cracked by drought, 
and the vegetation consisted of low sunt trees, 
thorns and tall bleached grass, the whole sucked 
dry and colourless by the sun. Cocoons hung 
on the low twigs and on the grasses, and there 
were innumerable spoor of wild beasts. 

After about an hour or an hour and a half we 
heard five reports in succession. We waited 
anxiously. Then followed silence for half an 
hour, then eight shots close together. This we 
could not altogether understand, and consequently 
were relieved when after another half-hour had 
passed one shikari returned with the information 
that they had come upon the herd, which con- 
sisted of fifteen animals, and that they had success- 
fully killed one bull elephant. He had come for 
more men to help in cutting up the animal. The 
men started at once, and soon afterwards I followed 
them with two shikaris as guides. We had to 
traverse the forest of sunt trees, the deep fissures 
and stiff blackened grass and tangle of thorns 
making it difficult going ; besides these obstacles 
dried elephant footmarks a foot deep were traps 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 221 

to trip the unwary. After a quarter of an hour 
we plunged into a marsh, thick with coarse rushes, 
the muddy water surging up to our waists as we 
ploughed our way through. 

The dead elephant lay in the thicket beyond, 
and when we had crossed the marsh to terra 
firma on the other side, and emerged soaking and 
muddy, our nostrils were assailed by a revolting 
stench. A few steps further brought us to the 
spot. The carcass was on its side, and seemed 
enormous as it lay thus prone and inert. The 
sides were somewhat fallen in, owing to the removal 
of much of the inside, and our little Habbania Arab 
was actually at work inside the horrid cave of the 
belly, literally covered with blood from head to 
foot, and very gleeful. The animal was already 
half -skinned, but I was obliged to withdraw from 
the sickening sight to a little distance, and started 
back at sunset over the marsh again. The tusks, 
or sinoon, had already been hewn off and conveyed 
to the boat ; and the men that accompanied me 
back bore away the ears, each the size of an hotel 

doormat. Captain A and Captain N told 

us that they had come across the herd early in the 
proceedings, and saw them all quietly cropping 



222 MY SUDAN YEAR 

grass with their trunks and stuffing it into their 
mouths. The attacking party got down wind 
behind an ant-hill and wounded one bull, the 
whole herd starting off pell-mell through the wood. 
A little while later the guns came up with the herd 
again, sought the shelter of another ant-hill, and 
fired. They were well down wind, but the wounded 
animal, infuriated, somehow scented their where- 
abouts, and charged them at close quarters. 

Captain N said he had rarely experienced a 

more paralysing feeling than that caused by the 
sight of the huge creature when it thundered right 
at them with lifted trunk ; but a second well- 
placed bullet from Captain A 's rifle brought 

him down, and several more finished the work. 

An elephant judges where his enemies are entirely 
by smell, as his small eyes are very short-sighted, 
and his trunk twists this way and that as he sniffs 

the air to get wind of the danger. Captain A 

told me that on one occasion an elephant suc- 
ceeded in getting hold of his shikari, and seizing 
the unfortunate man in his trunk, battered him 
to a shapeless mass against the trees. The natives 
display great prowess in killing elephants ; indeed, 
a girl will say to her lover, " I will not believe that 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 223 

you are a brave man until you have killed an 
elephant." One brave gallops backwards and 
forwards on horseback in front of the animal 
until it is bewildered, then another darts forward 
swiftly, hurls his spear at the one vital spot, and 
kills the elephant. That they can manage to 
worst such an enormous and dangerous animal 
with nothing but dexterity and their spears to 
aid them, and that they contrive to drive their 
feeble weapons into the thick hide, is little short 
of a miracle. 

It is strange how, if game has been killed, no 
matter how deserted and uninhabited the forest 
has seemed before, some natives will spring up as 
if from the ground in time to come in for a share 
of the meat. 

As if by magic, during the afternoon some Nuers 
had appeared and had watched proceedings from 
the top of an ant-heap ; likewise a reverend-looking 
whale-headed stork from another. The Nuers 
offered to help our men, and accordingly, at about 
half -past ten, two of them walked out of the scrub 
to the boats, bearing the elephant's feet on their 
heads. Their yellow mops of hair, protruding 
teeth, and black, naked bodies, did not give them 



224 MY SUDAN YEAR 

a very taking appearance, but they were well- 
disposed, and sat down on the bank to watch us. 
We offered them a present of beads, but they re- 
fused them ; probably the beads were out of 
fashion, for the Arab traders say that the natives 
will not look at beads which have been the rage 
only a short while before, so quickly do the modes 
change. The merchants, therefore, must keep in 
touch with the vagaries of the season if they wish 
to sell their goods. Money, too, was refused by 
the ingenuous pair, but they were delighted with 
a present of a glass bottle, a coat-button and some 
brass wire. The button was forthwith made into 
a pendant. Half an hour later we started again 
down river, the new meat adding considerably to 
the odours from the roof of the living-nugger. 
Strips of black elephant hide were spread out to 
dry on all sides, the scooped-out feet were set out 
to be sun-cured the next morning, and every time 
the wind blew across we were reminded unpleasantly 
of the smell of slaughter-houses. 



CHAPTEK XVIII 

TO THE SUDD AND BACK (continued) 

rpHERE is always something depressing about 
a return voyage : a demoralised feeling, an 
inertia, prevents one from keeping a satisfactory 
log ; and I cannot find much worthy of record in 
my notes of our second journey through the sudd, 
back to Lake No. We were persecuted by serut 
flies, and killed some white-eared cob, but on the 
whole lost interest. We reached Khor Attar, 
where we had wooded on the way up, at about ten 
o'clock one glaring, flaring forenoon, the tem- 
perature being already 92 in the shade. The men 
took off the elephant tusks in order to scrape them 
on shore amid a group of vaguely attracted 
Shilluks, undraped as ever, their faces plastered 
with pink clay, their plumed spears in their hands, 
one foot drawn up so as to rest on the other knee 
in their favourite attitude. A little farther on 
15 225 



226 MY SUDAN YEAR 

there was a little crowd and a certain air of com- 
motion, and this drew me towards the village, 
where, in front of one tukl, there was a strange 
collection of objects. Large white flags, one bear- 
ing the Star and Crescent, another an inscription 
from the Koran, and the rest as blank as handker- 
chiefs, were flapping idly beside the little straw 
dwelling ; a rebabi or Sudanese fiddle was placed 
on a chair ; many native drums, pots and pans, 
gourds, earthen braziers for the burning of incense, 
and what not, strewed the ground. Finally, two 
women were squatted beside this assortment of 
bric-a-brac, cleaning and cutting up two sheep, 
while yellow pariah dogs, their mien apologetic 
and wistful, prowled about in hope of catching the 
scraps of offal which the busy, smiling dames 
occasionally tossed to them with their blood-stained 
black fingers. 

When cleaned, the sheep were hung on a hori- 
zontal bar, ready for roasting. 

On inquiry, I found that these apparently festive 
preparations were for funeral celebrations that 
night, a woman having died. A great diluka was to 
be held that night, and seas of merissa were to be 
drunk ; the revelries, dancing and drinking to be 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 227 

kept up for three days, it being the custom to 
celebrate the death of a person in much the same 
manner as his wedding. 

At half-past twelve we arrived at Taufikia, but 
did not stop. Blasts of wind, so hot that they 
seemed to issue from the mouth of a great furnace, 
reduced us to a state of great irritation. There 
were troops stolidly drilling, and English officers 
patiently grilling, and thinking no doubt with 
fierce anticipation of summer leave. I noticed 
many crocodiles lying together in sixes and sevens 
on the bank, dozing in loathly fashion, or slipping 
into the water at our approach. The crocodile 
has the same slow furtiveness as the cockroach and 
other vermin. We dealt out death to a few of 
them. At four o'clock, as if by miracle, a few 
drops of rain fell, the shower continuing for five 
or ten minutes, the first I had seen for several 
months. It scarcely wetted the decks, but we 
enjoyed it bareheaded. Shortly afterwards we 
passed a pretty village called Wau not to be 
confounded with the larger Wau in the Bahr-el- 
Ghazal. 

The night was heavy, as if with impending rain, 
and about eight o'clock the next day there was 



228 MY SUDAN YEAR 

a sharp downfall, which did not, however, freshen 
the air. The day was damp and grey and English- 
looking, and the White Nile became transformed 
into a dingy current flowing dismally through a 
miserable country. Truly it is only the magic 
of light and atmosphere that makes the beauty 
of Africa. Crocodiles and hippos abounded ; they 
apparently appreciated the change of weather. It 
was still steamy and hot, as if we were in a forcing- 
house. 

Soon after we had passed Jebel Ahmed Agha, 
the wind changed round from south to north, 
and the river became so rough that we shipped a 
great deal of water. In order to prevent the nugger 
from being swamped, we had to turn into the 
bank and to abandon the idea of progress till the 
next day. That too, when it dawned, proved to 
be very windy, and we made but slow headway 
against it. At Renk wooding station, which is 
considerably below Renk, we stopped for fuel, and 
our little Habbania Arab left us to return to his 
home and children. We gave him presents of 
money, beads and jewellery, and in consequence 
he was one beam of delight as he bade us farewell, 
saying many times, " Mabrouk ! Mabrouk ! " 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 229 

(Good luck ! ). He had certainly proved himself an 
excellent and enthusiastic shikari, and a chit to 
that effect joined the collection of precious papers 
tied up in his turban. 

In the course of a conversation at lunch about 
the railway to El Obeid, which, as I have men- 
tioned in an earlier chapter, has brought the 

Government within reach of Darfur, Captain A 

told us that one sheikh is said to have made the 
remark, " Ali Dinar would be wise to return and 
take a pension while he can ! " This would seem 
to show that in native opinion the days of the 
Darfur Sultanate are numbered since the coming 
of the railway. 

Ali Dinar, Sultan of Darfur, is a picturesque 
tyrant whose dominion holds good over territory 
as big as England ; and many tales are current 
about him. He has a large standing army, and 
four thousand cavalry, and so exacting is the state 
kept up by this dusky monarch that those who 
approach him must prostrate themselves to the 
ground and touch the dust with their foreheads 
on pain of instant death. In cruelty, Ali Dinar 
outdoes even the Khalifa. A certain merchant 
sold an English spring mattress to a native Sultan 



230 MY SUDAN YEAR 

in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and the fame of this article 
of luxury spread abroad even unto the kingdom of 
Darfur. Thereupon the merchant received shortly 
afterwards a letter from Ali Dinar, asking why 
the bed had not been offered to him, as he could 
have paid twice the sum. The merchant has- 
tened to reply that he would himself bring a similar 
bed to Darfur without delay. Accordingly he 
set out, but no sooner had he arrived, after many 
days' toilsome journey, than he was summoned into 
the presence of Ali Dinar, violently reproached for 
having given first choice to a negro potentate 
instead of to an Arab Sultan, and then cut up 
into several hundred pieces. 

This amiable person has a harem composed of 
four hundred wives besides other women, and 
from these he selects twelve to be in special atten- 
dance every night. These twelve are marshalled 
into an enclosure in which there are three houses, 
and four women are placed in each house. For 
fear of assassination, no one outside the enclosure 
is allowed to know in which house the Sultan has 
deigned to pass the night, and none of the four 
women in the house he so honours is permitted to 
close an eyelid until the day has dawned and their 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 231 

lord has left the enclosure. Should they do so, 
the penalty is death. In addition to these pre- 
cautions, a guard of twenty men is stationed 
within the enclosure, and an outer guard is on 
duty to protect him in case he wishes to leave the 
enclosure during the night. Like the Commander 
of the Faithful, Ali Dinar has a habit of wandering 
about at night, and eavesdropping under cover 
of darkness, so that he may learn what his subjects 
think of him. If by chance he overhear an ad- 
verse opinion, woe to that man who has delivered 
it, for ways of death are many in Darfur. 

In appearance he is a negroid Arab of powerful 
build ; his eyes are somewhat bloodshot, and he 
wears a beard. He is the descendant of a long 
line, his forefathers having been Sultans of Darfur 
for four hundred years. He is a vain man, and is 
said to use a European bath, not for purposes of 
cleanliness, but that once a week it may be rilled 
with fat, in which he lies up to the neck, so that 
he may become strong. He is, of course, immensely 
rich, and pays a yearly tribute to the Anglo- 
Egyptian Government. 

. . . 

The afternoon had been terribly hot and sunless, 



232 MY SUDAN YEAR 

and the wind, which was strongly against us, was 
as hot as a living flame. Bush fires roaring up 
into the sky did not lessen the heat. "It is a 
wretched country, and not worth keeping/' wrote 
Gordon in his journal. The late King Leopold is 
said to have remarked that he would not accept 
the Sudan if it were served to him on a silver 
salver. Yet every mile now brought us nearer 
Khartoum, the seat of the government which has 
made optimism a watchword. That the Sudan is 
worth keeping, even at a cost, has been proved. 
Its wretchedness is being fought inch by inch by 
resolute Englishmen with but small success, it is 
true, yet progress is steady, and must tell in the 
end. But nothing on earth can make it a white 
man's country. 

We were seated quietly at dinner that evening, 
when a sudden scrunching and grating sent us all 
to our feet, and then on to the upper deck to see 
what had happened. We had struck a rock ! In 
this part of the river there is only one submerged 
rock, and that almost a tradition, but we had been 
unlucky enough to run on to it. Had the river 
been lower the damage might have been serious, 
but as it was, no harm was done. As the nuggers 



TO THE SUDD AND BACK 233 

were shipping a good deal of water, however, 
almost drowning the unfortunate donkeys and 
live-stock, we grounded ourselves, and waited in 
hope that the wind would go down. The next 
morning was no better, and after ploughing our 
way against the gale for a little while, we were 
forced to put into shore again, close to Jebelein. 
The men made use of the enforced halt to go ofl 
and shoot gazelle in the desolate-looking marsh- 
land, which gave forth a disagreeable stench. 

That night brought us to Kosti, and the next 
day to El Dueim. Twenty-four hours after we 
had left Dueim, I was awakened at dawn by the 
creaking song of the sakya, familiar and monoto- 
nous, from the bank above. We had completed 
our journey, and were once more in Khartoum, 
once more back in civilisation. 

The hot season exodus had already begun, some 
going home to Europe, others to the Lebanon in 
Syria or to Cyprus, where many Anglo-Egyptians 
find health and cool breezes in the summer camps 
on high places ; others, less fortunate, to the hill 
stations of Erkowit or Sinkat in the Sudan itself. 
For the Sudan has summer resorts (the expression 
must be used comparatively), these being situated 



234 MY SUDAN YEAR 

in the hills which command the Red Sea coast. 
They are reached by the Port Sudan railway, and 
of the two, though more inaccessible owing to the 
fact that it is distant from the railway station 
by some hours of camel or tonga, Erkowit is the 
pleasanter. The Governor-General has a house 
there, bungalows have been built and are to be 
hired for the summer at low rates, there is a small 
golf course, and shrubs and trees break the sandy 
monotony of the hills. And, of course, there is a 
view many views of the sun-dried hills and 
valleys in air as clear and rare as ether, for Erkowit 
is 3,800 feet above the sea-level. In the neighbour- 
hood there is shooting gazelle, ibex, wart-hog, 
and so on. 

A few, for all cannot go on leave at once, remain 
to sweat away the hot months at their ordinary 
posts, in a temperature which rises to 115 and 116 
in the shade during the daytime and remains 
stifling through the night. In the dog-days of 
Khartoum that company of white men is small 
and quiet, for the white women have gone to 
other climes, the visitors have long since fled, and 
the heat does not leave one much energy for small 
talk or games. It is only when the North wind 




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TO THE SUDD AND BACK 235 

begins to blow that the heavy oppression of damp 
heat is lifted ; for the South wind brings with it 
the moist vapours and intolerable heat of Central 
Africa ; it bears on its wings the miasma from the 
great Sudd region, and the fevers which breed in 
it. There the rains have begun, the sullen tropical 
rains that wash the soul of any white man who 
may be forced to linger in the country ; the 
steaming, soaking, pitiless rains of the tropics, 
which smite the earth as with living swords. 



SOMETHING ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE 

" FOK " 

T HAVE said in a former chapter that I would 
later on discuss the Dinkas by themselves, 
and this seems the proper chapter for such a dis- 
cussion. The principal Dinka tribes are the 
Abialang Dinkas, inhabiting the eastern side of 
the Nile from Karshawal to Melut, their territory 
embracing Niel ; the Eueng Dinkas, who have their 
home in the Sudd district about Tonga, Khor Atar 
and Lake No ; the Gnok Dinkas in a small territory 
from Taunkia to Abwong, near the Anuak country ; 
the Shish or Honey Dinkas on the western bank 
of the Bhar-el-Gebel between Shambe and Bor ; 
and the Twi Dinkas, who are settled in a wide 
district extending roughly some hundred and 
twenty miles north of Bor on the east bank of the 
Bahr-el-Gebel. 
Of these the Northern Dinkas are beginning 

236 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 237 

gradually to lose their primitive simplicity, their 
unsophisticated manners and their strictness to- 
wards the moral observances. For in the eyes of 
the Southern Dinka, to wrong a man's honour in 
the person of his wife is a crime deserving of death, 
while such an offender, in the North, will get off 
with a bribe of cattle. In neither case is the woman 
punished. In short, many of their laws, based 
upon the most fundamental principles of property- 
protection and tribal growth, would serve as 
models for the code of an ideal State managed by 
eugenists. No tolerance is shown, the eye and 
the tooth are rigorously exacted, but however 
extreme the penalties may seem to us, it is im- 
possible to deny the soundness of the bases upon 
which their code has been raised. 

Religion does not enter into their laws as a 
deciding factor. Common sense and the inherited 
instinct of healthy development do. The Dinkas 
wear but little clothing, modesty and shame 
would be words incomprehensible as applied to 
consciousness of the body ; yet the morality of a 
Dinka village would put the morality of any 
country village in rural England to the blush. 
And this is not due to any vague and ill-defined 



238 MY SUDAN YEAR 

ethical sense ; it is due to the fact that hard 
experience has taught them that human life is 
wealth, just as, in a lesser degree, cattle are wealth ; 
that woman is a valued property ; and that an 
offence against a woman is an offence against the 
race. The tribe which possessed healthy children 
would later possess able warriors, and the tribe 
which protected its women would have those 
children. 

Their religion is simple. They are Theists, in 
fact they have the same root idea of Theism as the 
Chinese. There is a Supreme Spirit, they say, 
called Dengdit, who rules all things both in heaven 
and earth, and is accredited with beneficence and 
benevolence. According to the tales and legends 
collected by the British missionaries at Bor, the 
first man and woman, the Adam and Eve of Dinka 
tradition, were called Gurungdit and Abungdit. 
In time, Abungdit, during her husband's absence, 
gave birth to twin boys. One baby was very 
beautiful, his skin being black, soft and glossy ; 
the other was as red as raw meat or as the English ; 
in fact, Abungdit thought him not to be compared 
in any way to her black offspring. So she decided 
to keep the black baby for herself ; and on her 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 239 

husband's return, gave him the red-skinned child ; 
concealing his brother in her hut, and not telling 
any one of his existence. 

Abungdit presented the red child to Dengdit, 
who, to quote directly from the tale, 

" started him in life with many good possessions, 
cattle, guns and many kinds of splendid food and 
clothing. At last the little black child began 
to ask his mother for gifts, but she could give him 
nothing but a spear. Seeing that he could get 
nothing more from his mother, he decided to go 
and ask his father Gurungdit for good things like 
those of his brother. So he journeyed to hia 
father's hut. 

" But when Gurungdit saw the black child and 
found that he had been thus deceived, he was very 
wroth, and refused to listen to the request. ' Then/ 
said the child, ' I will sit here at the door till you 
grant me what I ask/ So every night, when 
Gurungdit went to bed, there sat the little black 
child still. At last, wearied by his importunity, 
Gurungdit gave him one little cow-calf. And 
that is why the Dinkas have only cattle and spears, 
while the English have guns and clothes, many 
kinds of food, and in fact all the good things of 
life." 

These stories are so interesting, that I am 



240 MY SUDAN YEAR 

tempted to quote more of them. They are usually 
regarded as secret by the Dinkas, and one old man 
in the tribe is appointed to hand on the tales to the 
youths of the rising generation. Arabic-speaking 
Dinkas rarely relate any of the genuine legends, 
but if asked to do so, often invent a story for their 
hearers. But the missionaries occasionally glean 
them from Dinka boys, who, as Bishop Gwynne 
writes, " will sometimes stop in the middle suddenly 
as if they remembered that they were speaking 
forbidden words." 

I reprint those which were given by the mis- 
sionaries to Bishop Gwynne, in the hope that they 
will collect more of this valuable material, so 
important to those who will in the future study the 
folk-lore of Central Africa. 

" Long, long ago there was no fire. When the 
Dinkas caught fish they cut them in pieces and 
placed them in pots in the sun. When the heat 
caused the fat to melt, they would drink the 
liquid fat and eat the flesh raw. One day the 
Dog was hunting far away in the forest. A great 
storm began, and he was soon wet and shivering 
with the cold. So he crept into a hole for shelter. 
And this hole was by chance the home of the Snake, 
and in it was a fire. The Dog liked the warmth 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE "FOK" 241 

and crept backwards gradually towards the fire. 
* Nephew/ said the Snake, for the Snake is uncle 
to the Dog, ' you will burn yourself/ ' Uncle/ 
replied the Dog, ' Very good/ So he crept farther 
back, until at last his tail caught fire. So he was 
terrified and sprang from the hole, and as he fled 
through the forest the grass and bushes burst 
into flame. The Dinkas then saw a red glow on 
the horizon, and went out with broken potsherds 
and gathered the still glowing charcoal and carried 
it back to the villages. And now, when a man is 
angry with his dog and would beat him, one 
standing by will say, ' Don't beat the dog. Did 
not the Dog bring the fire, and the fire give you 
good foo* ? ' 

Another resembles our nursery rhyme, " Hey- 
diddle-diddle." 

" The first cow of all fell down from Heaven and, 
falling head foremost, struck the earth with its 
face, breaking its front teeth. And that is why a 
cow has only one row of teeth in front. A dog 
stood by and, seeing the cow thus fall upon its 
face and break its teeth, laughed so heartily that 
to this day his mouth stretches back through his 
cheeks to his ears." 

THE HAWK AND THE ROPE 

" In the far back ages there was once a rope 
16 



242 MY SUDAN YEAR 

suspended between Heaven and Earth. Up this 
rope men would pass to Heaven, and down it the 
Angels would descend to Earth. So there was 
constant communication between Heaven and 
Earth, and men knew and talked with God. But 
one fateful day the Hawk, an evil bird, passed 
through the air and bit the rope through with its 
beak. And since that day there has been no 
communication betwixt Heaven and Earth, and 
now men know not God, nor what goes on in 
Heaven, nor how they may win an entrance." 

" THE VULTURE AND THE ATOIT 

" Once upon a time a man asked the question, 
' What happens to a man when he dies ? ' A 
Vulture overheard the question, and taking a 
porridge-stirrer (a stick fitted into the section of 
a backbone), he dropped it into the river. The 
porridge-stirrer disappeared beneath the surface, 
but later on, because of the buoyancy of the wood, 
it rose to sight again. ' That/ said the Vulture, 
' is what happens to man. First he passes out of 
sight, and afterwards he rises again.' But the 
Atoit, a little bird with a pale blue breast and 
head, and a crimson spot over either ear, con- 
tradicted the Vulture. He took a piece of broken 
potsherd and dropped this into the river. It 
plunged beneath the surface and, sinking to the 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 243 

bottom, stayed there. ' That/ said the Atoit, 
' is what happens to man when he dies/ So the 
Dinkas hate the little bird that gave them no hope, 
but they love the Vulture that tried to tell them 
of a better fate." 

And Captain O'Sullivan, formerly Governor of 
the Upper Nile Province, tells the following story 
collected from a Dinka : 

" In the days of the great Sheikh Aiwel, the big 
chief, when we were a powerful tribe, a discussion 
arose as to where the Sun went at night and left 
the world cold. Aiwel was a great man and 
inspired ; he was born of an old woman who had 
never had children and was beyond the age of 
child-bearing, and his father was the " waters of 
the great river (the Nile)." And Aiwel said, ' Why 
do you talk so much of it ? it is only necessary 
to go and see. Direct a party to follow it on its 
course each day, and one day they will find its 
place of rest/ So some of the young men were 
appointed to find out, and they went, and were 
absent for very many moons, for they could not 
return without the knowledge for fear of the anger 
of Aiwel and the laughter of their sisters ; but 
one day a few old men came into the Dinka country, 
and asked for their relations, some of whom were 
dead ; these proved to be the survivors of the 



244 MY SUDAN YEAR 

young men who had followed the Sun ; and they 
told the people of their journey, and how they 
had followed until those left alive came to the 
end of the land, ' where there was very great water 
which was salt, and each night they saw the Sun 
sink into this water far off, and so it was cooled 
like a hot spear-blade which is dipped into the 
river, and so we have come back to tell our chief 
Aiwel/ " 

Like all primitive peoples, the Dinkas are 
extremely superstitious and credulous. In common 
with most of the tribes of the Southern provinces, 
they believe firmly in rain-makers namely, that 
a magic power is embodied in some people which 
enables them to induce, or withhold, a rainfall. 
The power is said to pass from father to son, and 
a long drought is unhealthy for a man of rain- 
making blood, for he may be accused of wilfully 
withholding rain, and may be killed in order that 
it may fall. This frequently happens, and the 
murder is not looked upon as a crime, but as a 
necessary step for the common weal. The rain- 
makers finish by believing in themselves. In an 
official report Captain Owen, now Governor of 
Mongalla Province, tells an anecdote of his own 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 245 

dealing with a rain-making sheikh in the Uganda 
Protectorate (not a Dinka, of course). 

' When I was serving in the Uganda Protectorate 
at Gondokoro in 1900 a deputation of Sheikhs 
visited me and asked me to imprison Sheikh Leju . . . 
on account of his having held up the rain. Leju 
lived in the hills, had had plenty of rain, and his 
crops were three feet high, whereas the Baris in 
the plains had very poor crops. It so happened 
that Leju came in to see me a few hours after the 
other Sheikhs had left. I informed him of what 
had happened, and told him he was an old ' fool ' 
to pretend he could bring or stop the rain. He 
declared he had the power, and to prove it said 
rain would come that afternoon, and so it did, 
a very heavy downpour commencing about four 
o'clock, and lasting some two hours." 

The crops in the Dinka districts are entirely rain 
crops, indeed it is looked upon as somewhat impious 
to irrigate by means of shaduf, so that it is a very 
serious matter if the wet weather delays. Con- 
sequently, when people displease them and the 
rain-makers threaten to withhold rain, great con- 
sternation is aroused. The whole thing is a mixture 
of bluff, fear and lies, and so is much of their 
supposed magic. For instance, one night, the 



246 MY SUDAN YEAR 

headman of one village goes into another with 
which his people are at enmity or because 
he wishes to wreak a private grudge upon a 
villager ; and ties a frog by one leg to a stick. 
The villagers find it in the morning, are much 
dismayed, and at once surmise who the offender is. 
Wiseacres recommend a counteracting charm ; 
accordingly the headman of the first village may 
discover a morning afterwards a headless snake 
secured to a stake within his JiosTi. Hs is afraid, 
and so the game goes on. The spell-makers who 
advise these childish pieces of ritual magic end, 
like the rain-makers, in themselves believing what 
they impose on others. 

It is certain, however, that their " witch- 
doctors " do support their claims to extra-Dinka 
wisdom in curious ways. Just before Halley's 
Comet was due to appear, a Dinka witch-doctor 
named Wai, in the Aliab district, prophesied that 
six days after the new moon, fire or a fiery spear 
would come down from Heaven and destroy those 
guilty of having shed man's blood. Hence he 
went about preaching peace and urging men to 
friendliness with one another. He attained such 
fame on account of his mission, that Dinkas from 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 247 

far and wide came to visit him. He gave out that 
he was possessed of the Supreme Spirit, Dengdit, 
never left his hut while the sun was up, and insisted 
that visitors should walk three times round his 
two huts the same way as the sun, before they 
were permitted to sit down and converse with 
him. He was supposed, of course, to possess 
miraculous powers. When seen by an English 
official, he appeared very friendly, and accepted a 
gift of tobacco. This same comet, when it ap- 
peared, very nearly produced trouble in another 
province, Sennar, as, contrary to Wai's view of 
its mission, the Arabs of that district regarded it 
as a call to arms in the cause of Mahdiism, for, 
according to tradition, most events of importance 
have been heralded by comets. The Government 
was obliged to act quickly in order to prevent a 
serious uprising. 

In each Dinka village there is a sacred palm tree, 
and woe betide any one who touches it or plucks 
a leaf from it. Not even the most aged men, how- 
ever, can tell why the palm tree is reverenced. 

I have spoken of the Dinka code of laws, but 
this is somewhat misleading, as of course, none of 
their laws are written, and, moreover, they are 



248 MY SUDAN YEAR 

modified according to the special exigencies of 
each tribe or village. The administration is left 
entirely in the hands of the old men age being 
highly respected by the Dinkas. 

The Sheikh of a village is, in consequence, a 
constitutional ruler that is, though in war he 
leads the warriors, in questions of government 
or justice he must defer to the advice of the old 
men on his council. The heads of families submit 
important family disputes to this council for 
settlement, and must conform to its decision 
even though it be adverse to their own in- 
terest. 

I have said that in cases of moral delinquency, 
the guilty woman, being regarded merely as a 
piece of property whose value has been feloniously 
depreciated, is not punished, even though she 
have acted as temptress. The man is, in every 
case, looked upon as responsible and punishable. 
Similarly, no woman can possess property, as she 
is herself but a possession. Captain O'Sullivan 
gives a list of a male Dinka's property as follows : 
his wives, his unmarried sons, his unmarried 
daughters, the children of unmarried daughters, 
daughters whose marriage has been " broken," 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 249 

the children of such daughters, slaves, children of 
slaves, cattle, corn, and all property earned by 
people who are his property. 

There are many somewhat curious features of 
Dinka justice. A man who causes the death of 
another of the same district, whether he kill him 
by accident or malice prepense, has to pay a 
death fine of so many head of cattle the amount 
varying according to the locality. The ordinary 
death fine is from twenty to thirty head of cattle 
in case of accident, or in a case of premeditated 
murder a blood feud sometimes ensues if the 
council of elders is unable to arrange a payment 
of cattle. The blood feud is rarely long pro- 
tracted, the offender or his family pay the fine, 
and peace is again observed. 

If a girl or woman be killed, the fine imposed is 
eight (or less) head of cattle if the man who killed her 
be not her owner ; and if he be her lawful owner, 
nothing is said, as the loss is looked upon as his. 
But in fact, in the case of a girl being murdered, 
her kinsmen often retaliate, or demand as many 
cattle as would have been asked for her marriage 
settlement ; and sometimes the matter is settled 
by the gift of another girl to the injured family, 



250 MY SUDAN YEAR 

any cattle due for her marriage payment coming 
in to them instead of to her own people. 

In contradistinction to the comparative leniency 
of the laws against killing, crimes against women 
are very severely punished, more especially by the 
Southern tribes, seduction and similar offences 
being visited by death. 

Theft is rare, but cattle-lifting between tribe 
and tribe is looked upon as a legitimate sport, and 
no more a breach of honest conduct than similar 
raiding by the Borderers in Scotland not so very 
long ago. 

Marriage between relatives is forbidden, and 
any union in the forbidden degree is most strin- 
gently punished, the forbidden degree being blood 
relationship of any traceable kind whatever, no 
matter how distant the cousinship, on either 
father's or mother's side. But it is difficult to 
understand how the rule can be adhered to strictly 
in a tribal community. Should an unmarried girl 
bear a child by a man coming within the prohibited 
degree, however remotely, they are not allowed 
to marry, and the child becomes the property of 
the mother's father or guardian. Should she 
eventually marry some one else, the child becomes 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 251 

the property of her husband, who pays a few more 
cattle than would be her marriage payment in 
the ordinary way, for having the child thrown 
into the bargain. Illegitimate children, in fact, 
always become the property of the mother's father 
or guardian, and are regarded rather as an asset 
than as a drawback by a subsequent suitor, as 
they are handed over to him with their mother 
when he marries her, becoming his children by 
adoption ; and he gladly adds more head of cattle 
to his payment for that privilege. In short, up 
to a certain age the mother of a child, whether 
legitimate or illegitimate, is worth more cattle 
than a childless woman or virgin. 

The whole thing is perfectly logical when viewed 
from the standpoint that women and children are 
property just as cattle are property, the only 
difference being that the former are property of 
a more valuable description. It should be added, 
however, lest the outsider should think that women 
are treated as mere chattels, that no girl need marry 
a man against her will. 

I could wish that I had more space to devote to 
these interesting tribal laws, but from this brief 
survey it will easily be understood that English 



252 MY SUDAN YEAR 

inspectors who attempt to interfere in tribal 
disputes must walk warily and take every tra- 
dition into consideration, for the root idea at the 
bottom of Dinka justice is totally different from 
that upon which our code is founded, owing to 
intrinsically alien conceptions of what is property. 
I cannot leave the subject, however, without 
referring to the laws of atonement, so oddly remi- 
niscent, as Captain 'Sullivan observes, of the 
practices of the Israelites (even now in vogue in 
Tunis), to which some Dinka customs, such as the 
laws regarding widows (see Deut. xxv. 5 and 6), 
bear close resemblance. In order to enforce their 
authority at some remote period, the elders of the 
tribe must have had recourse to this device for 
punishing crime. They persuaded the people that 
the wrath of the Divine Being, Dengdit, was caused 
by certain breaches of tribal law, such as a marriage 
between relatives, so they ordered sacrifices of a 
bull, cow or cattle, according to the gravity of the 
offence, which were solemnly killed to appease the 
offended Deity, at the same time a gift of cattle 
being made to the family injured by the culprit ; 
in the case of a marriage between relatives the 
family injured would be that of the girl. Should 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 253 

any disaster befall the culprit or his family after this 
sacrifice had been made, it was held that the sacri- 
fice was not sufficient, and other animals were killed. 

Dinkas, like Shilluks, pay tribute in the form of 
cattle or durra ; and in the more northerly dis- 
tricts, such as Renk, are gradually growing accus- 
tomed to the novel idea that if they are too poor 
to own cattle and wives like their more fortunate 
brethren, they may be enabled to earn some by 
working for pay. 

The Shilluks, too, are beginning to realise the 
value of paid labour, and in the North are learning 
to abandon their lordly idleness in order to improve 
their condition. That is, improve it from the white 
man's standpoint, for the morals and manners of 
the negroid tribes do not improve when their 
standard of living becomes more complex, and 
contact with Arabs and whites certainly has a 
deteriorating effect upon them in many ways. 
The stern morality of their primitive state becomes 
lax, they assume vices which were unknown to 
them in their savage condition, and the civilisation 
which teaches them to wear clothes and to use 
money teaches them also much which will sap 
gradually their vitality and self-respect. 



254 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The Shilluk is, undoubtedly, of a higher racial 
development than the Dinka. He is still loyal to 
his Mek or King (see Chapter XIII), and regards 
the Government as an interloper ; and, though 
the Mek himself always bears out Government 
authority, is inclined to assume a haughty attitude 
towards foreigners. No Shilluk woman will marry 
willingly an Arab, or Turk as he is known among 
the tribes. Among the Shilluks, women occupy a 
very high position ; certain religious ceremonies are 
in their hands. As with the Dinkas, offences 
against the honour of women are punished with the 
utmost severity ; the extreme penalty is, however, 
being gradually exchanged for forfeiture of pro- 
perty in districts where Government influence is 
paramount. A Dinka man wishing to espouse 
a Shilluk maiden must pay more for her than he 
would for a Dinka bride. Perhaps the reason why 
the Shilluk considers himself superior is that he 
is more courageous, for the Dinka, with all his 
virtues, is somewhat of a coward. Besides, the 
Shilluk woman, unlike the Dinka woman, is the 
dictator in her household, and a case of wife-beating 
is rare in a Shilluk village. 

Of all the tribute-paying peoples " fok," the least 




IN" A SH1LLUK VILLAGE. 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE " FOK " 255 

amenable is the Nuer nation. These gaunt, ash- 
plastered phantoms who peered at us from their 
ant-hills in the Sudd country are amphibious 
creatures and often live where no white man can 
follow them. Their Sheikhs, who are for the most 
part aged men, may listen politely to the in- 
spectors and promise to pay tribute, but the young 
bloods, who have their own views on the subject, 
drive off their cattle into the heart of the swamps 
where no human being save those of their own 
tribe can penetrate. Generations of swamp- 
dwelling have taught them to pass lightly and pick 
their way through morasses, in which the un- 
accustomed plunge up to their necks in slime and 
water. For some time they made their boast that 
they were able to do without the Government, that 
tribute-paying was only for Shilluks and Dinkas, 
and not for them. Their kuguars would produce 
and shake their spears at the Inspector, sometimes 
spears would be thrown at him, and it was only by 
using extreme tact and exerting great patience that 
he and his small escort of police were able to go 
into the Nuer country without a loss of face. 
But some chiefs became so truculent that Govern- 
ment has been obliged to send strong administra- 



256 MY SUDAN YEAR 

tive patrols into the Nuer districts, and even 
these cannot penetrate into the swampiest parts, 
such as the sudd country between the Bahr-el- 
Zeraf and the Bahr-el-Gebel, so that the Nuers who 
inhabit them are discreetly treated as negligible 
quantities. 

It may be asked what right has Government to 
interfere with these primitive tribes. The answer 
of the official is that, as we profess to protect them 
from slave and c&ctle raiding, settle inter-tribal 
disputes, prevent acts of aggression by tribute- 
paying tribes, and generally shield them from 
disaster, we naturally expect some kind of return. 
For the tribes are always squabbling and raiding 
one another's cattle, indeed a foray is to the young 
warriors the very spice of life, and without Govern- 
ment protection the weakest would certainly go 
to the wall.* 

The Nuers are extremely ignorant, inflated with 
conceit, and low in the human scale, according to 
the officials, and are apt to regard leniency as 

* (From Mr. K. C. P. Struve's report in 1909). " Cases have 
occurred, too, where Government interference was resented by 
both parties, as though one had tried to stop an inoffensive game. 
The official's position resembles that of the referee at a football 
match between two Welsh colliery districts." 



PEOPLE WHO LIVE "FOK" 257 

weakness. Be this as it may, one thing is certain, 
to expect them to work would be to look for figs 
on a thistle. The possession of cattle is, to the 
Nuer or Dinka, the main object of life. He has no 
other needs. What use, therefore, are the white 
man and the goods he may offer ? For food this 
son of simplicity has the durra which is watered by 
the rain, and the fish which he spears in the river, 
supplemented by hippo or other meat when Allah 
or Dengdit, or the tribal Equivalent, sends it. 
Other necessities he has not. Money means nothing 
to him ; a spear, when once purchased ; will last a 
lifetime. Clothes are thought mere vanity, and 
copper bracelets are sufficient for his adornment : 
for amusement he is dependent upon no one. 
Why should he work ? 

Of course the answer to this is that as civilisa- 
tion lays insidious hands on these savages, their 
needs, at present so grandly few, will multiply ; 
their life, now so simple, will become complex. 
The thin end of the wedge is already inserted. The 
Nuers and Dinkas know that for a good tusk pf 
elephant ivory they may expect to receive from 
ten to a score of cattle, and they are proud of their 
herds. Other things will gradually follow. The 
17 



258 MY SUDAN YEAR 

women will play Eve to the trading tempter. As 
soon as the women clamour for silver bracelets 
instead of brass bangles, the magnificent idlers 
their husbands will have to work for money to buy 
them or commodities to offer in exchange for them. 
Missionaries prepare the way for the trader. Edu- 
cation creates other needs and desires ; the Serpent 
will offer the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and 
these naked Adams will begin to wear clothes, 
incidentally needing the wherewithal to pay for 
them. Once clothed, the desire of luxury will 
creep in, they will covet strange foods, better 
housing ; and, so closely does history repeat 
itself, they will be driven from a state of idleness 
and simplicity in the Garden of Eden of their 
savagery, to toil, to bear the burden of civilisation, 
to begin that weary race towards complexity 
which ends in the long run in decadence. Poor 
savage ! I am glad that I saw him in the dignity 
of barbarism ! For when, to return to the Dinka 
legend, Dengdit showers upon Abungdit's black 
son the gifts which He has bestowed upon his white 
brother, He will gradually withdraw that greatest 
gift of all, contentment. 



CHAPTEK XX 

BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 

T HAVE already written of the fights between 
the Baggaras of the plains and the Nubas 
in the hills in Kordofan, and as I had the oppor- 
tunity of talking with several officials who had 
spent long periods in that part of the Sudan, it 
has occurred to me that what I heard might well 
be embodied in a separate chapter, for, of all the 
peoples that inhabit the Sudan, these tribes are 
perhaps the most interesting. The Baggaras 
formed the flower of the Dervish army it was 
the prostrate Baggara horsemen who strewed 
the desert at the battle of Omdurman ; and just 
as the Baggaras are the haughtiest and most 
vigorous Arabs in the Sudan, the Nubas are, in 
many ways, the most interesting and attractive of 
the negroid tribes. Both dwell in Kordofan, there 
is a bitter feud between them, both are courageous, 

259 



260 MY SUDAN YEAR 

both have lovable qualities. I never met an 
official whose lot had been cast in Kordofan who 
did not speak of both Baggaras and Nubas with 
enthusiasm. 

It is necessary, perhaps, to give a brief historical 
review of the course of events which have brought 
these two tribes together. 

In early times, the North of the Sudan was 
Christian, as is amply proved by the discovery of 
Christian inscriptions and emblems in excavations 
at Meroe and elsewhere. The Nubas were then 
inhabiting the country west of the Nile, and were 
a prosperous pastoral tribe. (It is probable that 
the Nubians were originally a mixture of this 
ancient tribe of Nubas and Egyptians.) The rich 
plains of Southern Kordofan were held by them 
after the annexation of the Sudan by the Moslems 
in 1275, and during the dynasty of the Fungs, who 
had their capital at Sennaar. Bit by bit the Arabs 
began to establish themselves in the Sudan, taking 
advantage of intertribal disputes, and marrying 
into the negroid peoples amongst whom they had 
settled. They soon became the ruling influence in 
the Sennaar kingdom, though the Fungs continued 
to reign and had conquered from the Blue Nile 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 261 

to the Abyssinian frontier and North as far as the 
Atbara. In the latter years of the eighteenth 
century the Fungs began to lose power, and 
the disorganisation of their rule encouraged 
Mohammed Ali to send an invading force up into 
the Sudan. In 1820 the first expedition pushed 
up the White Nile and into Kordofan, its leaders 
being inflamed by the hope of enriching them- 
selves from Sudani gold-mines and by the capture 
of slaves. 

But meanwhile, the existence of the Nubas had 
been threatened from elsewhere. They had, as I 
have said, originally dwelt in the grassy plains of 
Southern Kordofan ; but the nomad Baggara 
Arabs, filtering in from the West, coveted the 
country for their flocks and herds, and being a 
powerful and warlike tribe, drove the peaceful 
and pastoral Nubas inch by inch into their hills. 
More than that, they captured the unprotected 
Nubas, who were and are a finely-built race, and 
kept them as slaves or sold them to Egyptian 
dealers. This was the state of things when the 
Egyptians took over the Sudan, and the Egyptian 
Government left the matter there. The slave- 
raiding continued ; the unfortunate Nubas were 



262 MY SUDAN YEAR 

driven more and more into their hills or gebels, 
from which they would descend from time to time 
on the Baggaras in the plains for reprisals, taking 
their revenge where they could. Hill life is not 
conducive to tribal unity, and the Nubas speak 
many languages, all varying very widely. The 
country became divided up, each sub-tribe being 
apportioned a district ; and these Nuba districts 
were not only constantly protecting themselves 
against the Baggaras, but also against the aggres- 
sions and raids of their Nuba neighbours. Gebel 
made war on gebel, and sub-tribe on sub-tribe. 

The Nubas, once so prosperous, having been 
ousted from the plains, were now poor. They 
terraced their hills, it is true, and sowed grain on 
the rocky ledges, but this did not suffice. They 
were often driven to sell their children into slavery 
in exchange for durra to sustain life. 

The gebels were practically impregnable, and 
though the Egyptian Government succeeded in 
attacks on small gebels, and in forcing a few to pay 
tribute, they contented themselves for the most 
part with leaving the Baggaras masters of the 
situation, and in obliging them in return to pay 
heavy tribute. 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 263 

During Dervish times, the Nubas proved by no 
means tractable to Dervish rule, and were treacher- 
ously and cruelly treated, as is graphically described 
in Slatin Pasha's " Fire and Sword in the Sudan " 
and in Father Ohrwalder's account of his cap- 
tivity. But during this period, the poor but 
gallant Nubas gradually armed themselves, buying 
the rifles captured by the Dervishes from the ill- 
fated Hicks expedition, from the slave-dealers, who 
received slaves in exchange, and taught the Nubas 
how to use the fire-arms, unknowing that by so 
doing they were themselves giving the Nubas the 
means to protect themselves from slave-raiders. 

When the Anglo-Egyptian Government took 
possession, their first measure in Kordofan was 
to stop the slave-raiding as far as possible, their 
second to pacify the Nubas, who were now armed, 
mistrustful of every foreigner, and secure in the 
belief that in the fastnesses of their hills they were 
absolutely safe. At first the headmen of the gebels 
refused to visit any Government station, but their 
confidence was gradually gained, and they are 
now returning to agriculture; and the Arabs, 
instead of raiding, carry Nuba produce on their 
bulls to the eouks of the nearest towns. 



\ 



264 MY SUDAN YEAR 



As an illustration of the methods employed by 
Government officials in dealing with the Nubas, 
I must relate a story told me by an ex-official. 
He was going through the Nuba country with a 
small armed patrol in order to hear complaints 
and settle disputes between rival gebels for the 
Government gets its opportunity for asserting its 
authority and establishing its claims when a single 
native or a village applies to it for the settlement 
of a grievance. It is gradually being understood 
that the English do their best to judge between 
person and person, village and village, tribe and 
tribe, with impartiality ; and the Open Sesame 
of the inspector among tribes that are recalcitrant 
to authority is the cry of " Nahna mazulmin " or 
" Ana mazloum," of those who think themselves 
in need of protection or vindication. 

As among the Dinkas, in the case of killing, 
whether of man or woman or child or beast, 
compensation can be demanded by the injured 
people in the form of so much cattle. The fixed 
rate of compensation, or blood money, among the 
Nubas is seven head of cattle for a man, four head 
for a woman, and three for a horse. There- 
fore, when the Government acts as arbitrator, 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 265 

in case of a quarrel between gebel and gebel where 
blood has been shed, the whole thing must be 
counted out in cattle. 

In the case to which I refer, one gebel, which I 
will call A., had had a quarrel with a neighbouring 
gebel B. Moreover, Arabs complained that men 
from Gebel A. had driven off their cattle. It was 
impossible to say without inquiry whether Gebel 
A. was entirely wrong. It was quite possible that 
the Arabs had fully deserved to lose some of their 
cattle. So the little expedition went to see. The 
first night they camped under Gebel B., and the 
Arabs came in to make their formal complaint. 
Accordingly, a messenger was dispatched to Gebel 
A. asking them to send responsible men to meet 
the Government representatives, so that the matter 
could be judged. The headman, a kugur, of 
Gebel A. sent a messenger to say that he could 
not come. 

" Very well," said the Government envoy, " we 
will go to your place," and some of the Government 
party left the camp and set off for Gebel A., three 
miles away, leaving the main party at Gebel B. 
But the Nubas of Gebel A. were afraid, and refused 
to come down when messengers were sent to them. 



266 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Matters had reached a deadlock therefore until 
one of the English officials, a subordinate, was 
given permission to go and see what he could do 
single-handed towards persuading Gebel A. that 
nothing more than justice was intended. He rode 
up to the foot of the gebel, attended only by 
one policeman, dismounted and sat down. When 
some Nubas came along, he chatted to them in a 
friendly way, in order that they might see that 
he had come on a peaceable mission. Finally the 
headman approached, surrounded by an escort of 
about a hundred men, bearing rifles. They all sat 
down, Mr. X. and the headman in the centre 
of a circle of warriors. It was easy to see that 
the headman regarded his presence with the 
utmost suspicion. He was trembling with fright, 
although Mr. X. was really entirely at his mercy. 
However, the Englishman began to explain that 
the reason why he and his comrades had come was 
to serve the interests of peace, and not of war. 
The Government, he said, had the welfare of the 
tribes at heart, they wished to protect the weak, 
to see the tribes on friendly terms with one another, 
and to deal out justice. Complaints had been 
made, but they had heard only one side. Let the 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 267 

headman, therefore, come in to the Government, 
that he might give his side of the case, and a just 
judgment should be given, and arbitration made. 

But the headman would not listen to him. 
" This/' he said, " was the old Dervish plan, that 
when the headman of a gebel came into their 
camp after their fair promises, he was killed, and 
then the Dervishes took the hill while all was in 
confusion." 

" Did the Dervishes send an important Emir 
into the midst of you as a token of good faith ? 
Here am I, come into the midst of you, alone, to 
show you that no treachery is intended." 

But the terror of the old days had sunk deep. 
' When the Dervishes came," said the headman, 
" they camped where you have encamped, below 
the gebel of our enemies. How do I know that 
you are not like the Dervishes ? You are friendly 
with our enemies (of Gebel B.) : how shall I 
know that you are not in league with them 
against us ? ' 

" I am in your power. If you think that I am 
deceiving, it is open to you to kill me. If we 
meant to betray you, I should not have come here 
to put myself at your mercy." 



268 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The headman thought. Then he said, " You say 
you have come on a peaceful mission. Why have 
you brought troops with you ? *' 

" We have brought troops to chastise the unruly 
and punish those who will not obey us." 

All this conversation was carried on by means 
of an interpreter, and as the headman really 
seemed impressed, Mr. X. began to imagine that 
he was persuaded. But, instead, they all jumped 
up and began arguing most violently among them- 
selves. When one man had finished haranguing 
the rest, a second began, and so it went on for 
some time, until Mr. X., who was growing hungry, 
took out a biscuit and began to eat, at the same 
time offering the headman a piece of it. 

He refused, but explained politely, through the 
interpreter, that he was a priest (kitgur), and that 
priests never eat in public. At last he turned to 
Mr. X., and with an obvious air of honesty, said 
to him that his people advised him not to go, for 
there was a legend in their tribe that the first 
priest to go into land occupied by a foreign power 
must die. 

Mr. X. was at a loss as to what to say to this, 
but the headman continued, " If you can persuade 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 269 

those who sent you to camp on our hill instead of 
on the gebel of our enemies, we will come and 
discuss the matter as you wish." 

The Englishman replied that he would do his 
best to induce them to do so, on the condition that 
four of the most important men would accompany 
him as hostages back to the camp for the night. 

The headman agreed readily, and added that 
he would also send some sheep as a present. He 
picked out the men from the crowd of warriors 
around them, and the four braves looked some- 
what crestfallen as they answered the summons, 
nevertheless they came forward, and returned with 
Mr. X. 

It was settled to move the camp on the next 
day as the headman had requested, but during 
the intervening night the four hostages en- 
deavoured to run away. When three of them were 
re-captured, it transpired that the malicious Arabs 
had told them that they were to be killed. One 
man escaped, and long afterwards, when Mr. X. 
was in that part of the country, sent him a present 
of honey with the message that he regarded him 
as a brother. 

So the affair ended : the dispute was settled 



270 MY SUDAN YEAR 

to the contentment of every one ; and through the 
tact of the British official, an incident that might 
have resulted in bloodshed became a means of 
establishing friendly relations with a hitherto 
recalcitrant gebel. I have related this incident 
at such length because it is very typical of the 
work done, not only in Dar Nuba but throughout 
the Sudan.* 

The religion of the Nuba resembles that of the 
Dinka in that it is monotheistic, the Supreme 
Spirit being named Bail. This Deity dwells above 
the Earth, is almighty and beneficent ; giving and 
taking away life, and ordering the course of events 
in Earth and Heaven. There is a certain resem- 
blance to the Dinka legend too about the Nuba 
account of the first man and woman, Adam and 
Hawa, for like Abungdit, Hawa, the Nuba Eve, 
hid her black offspring from their father. Adam 
and Hawa had seven brown-skinned children and 
seven black, six of the black being boys and one 
a girl. Adam wished to shave the heads of his 
children, but Hawa concealed her black sons and 
daughter. According to the interesting notes 
which a former Government inspector handed 
* See also Chapter XIIL 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 271 

me,* the eldest black son, Tinhor, offended his 
father by laughing at him (is this a distant relation 
to the story of Noah and his sons ?) and was 
punished by the decree that the black children 
must be slaves to the brown. Later, the black 
children escaped and founded the black races in 
other lands. It is curious that in both this story 
and the Dinka legend there is the same tacit, 
almost pathetic, acknowledgment of the racial 
inferiority of the black man, and the recognition 
that his lot is different from that of his fairer 
brother. 

The Deity Bail, according to my informant, 
entrusts the guidance of men's affairs and destinies 
to lesser spirits the Arros. Each community, 
district, or village has its own Arro, or tutelary 
deity, and its own priests. The Arros were chosen 
by Bail as his lieutenants from the departed spirits 
of the first inhabitants. A large village or gebel 
may have several Arros, and may include female 
Arros, the number of the latter never being in- 
creased. These Arros govern the community, and 
deal out happiness and prosperity or sickness and 

* I believe that these notes were, or are to be, published by the 
journal of an Anthropological Society. If so, my apologies for 
reprinting such interesting information. 



272 MY SUDAN YEAR 

misfortune, acting as a body with a Chief or Sultan 
Arro as president. They also concern themselves 
with the well-being of the community in the next 
world. The Arros obtain permission of Bail before 
they punish or reward for good or bad actions, 
through the Sultan Arro. In fact, the Arros re- 
semble the patron saints of the Italian peasant, 
who mediate between the Supreme Being and the 
mortal. 

This hagiocracy, or board of saints, is represented 
again by priests or priestesses, each Arro having 
his or her representative or pontiff. The kugurs 
are greatly reverenced by the people, who accredit 
them with supernatural gifts. When a kugur 
dies, his place is filled by the Arro whose representa- 
tive he is, and the Arro enters the body of a person 
whom he has chosen as the dead kugur's successor, 
causing him to fall down in a trance, and speaks 
to the people through his mouth, after summoning 
them by weird screams. The people are then 
exhorted by the Arro to obey the new kugur; 
the man recovers from his trance and is recognised 
as filling a sacred office from that day forth. Some- 
times impostors assume the trance, as, for instance, 
some years ago, when a man simulated a trance 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 273 

and announced that he had been chosen to replace 
the chief kugur, who was still living. Some be- 
lieved him, others did not, and the believers 
brought him the usual offerings to bring the rains. 
The original kugur said that no rain should fall 
until the impostor was deposed. The rainy season 
drew near, and the village was in the utmost ex- 
citement as to which would be proved to have the 
real inspiration. But though the season had come, 
no rains fell. Day after day went by, the sky 
remained cloudless, and the earth parched. Weeks 
passed by, still there was no drop of the precious 
rain upon which the whole annual supply of food 
would depend. At last, terrified for their crops, 
the apostates returned, and the people made their 
gifts to the old kugur. Immediately, the rain fell. 
The goods of the pretender were seized by the 
people and given to the old kugur. 

The trances are induced by starvation, drink, 
and meditation. When the kugur admonishes or 
preaches to his people, he throws himself into a 
trance ; the Arro then avails himself of the kugur's 
body, and speaks through his mouth. 

In appearance the kugurs are usually ascetic, 
spare and melancholy, as becomes their vocation. 
18 



274 MY SUDAN YEAR 

It is seldom, says my informant, that one meets a 
smiling or chubby kugur. They wear iron brace- 
lets on their arms, and rings on their fingers and 
toes. Their staff of office is a wand or long-handled 
axe, with iron rings round the handle ; and they 
smoke pipes with long be-ringed stems. When 
one kugur meets another, he clasps his shoulders, 
hands and knees. The layman offers his shoulder 
or upper arm to a kugur when he meets one, so 
that it may be touched by the kugur's right hand, 
while the kugur, by way of blessing, spits on the 
Nuba's chest. The kugur, as seen in the story I 
have related, does not eat in public, and when at 
a public feast, touches the food to bless it. Very 
often they will not eat away from their own hills. 
They profess to work cures by spitting on the 
sick person. 

The Nubas do not pray for themselves, the 
kugur intercedes for them, therefore it is to him 
that they apply if they have a petition concerning 
worldly affairs. Sin is punished during a man's 
lifetime, and so there is no punishment to follow 
in a future life. Murder and theft are the worst 
sins, and unless restitution be made, the guilty 
may expect bad luck to follow them. (This is 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 275 

the same principle as the Sacrifice of Atonement 
of the Dinkas.) Murder can be expiated by the 
killing of the murderer by the murdered man's 
relatives, or, supposing the murderer to have fled, 
by the payment of seven head of cattle by his 
relatives, the confiscation of his property, and the 
destruction of his house and belongings by fire. 
His grain is confiscated and given to the Mek if 
the latter be not related to the dead man. If he 
be, the grain is given to strangers or destroyed. 
When once atonement has been made in these 
ways, the guilty man can return to his village and 
start life again. It is not murder to kill a man 
belonging to a hostile gebel, nor is it theft to raid 
his cattle. 

When a man has had his property stolen he goes 
to the kugur, with gifts, asking him to discover 
the stolen article or animal. The kugur then as- 
sembles the people together, and solemnly curses 
the thief, threatening him with dire calamities if 
the stolen goods be not delivered up (like the 
prelate in the " Jackdaw of Rheims "). A guilty 
conscience and fear combined will generally lead 
the robber to return what he has stolen, putting 
it by stealth outside the kugur's house. 



276 MY SUDAN YEAR 

The women are as a rule virtuous, but should a 
woman deceive her husband, he may take the law 
into his hands and kill her lover. Tale-bearing and 
scandal are, however, looked upon with contempt, 
and a man who cannot take care of his own wife 
with scorn and pity. An Englishman once asked 
an old Nuba what he would do if he found that 
his wife was unfaithful to him. He replied that, 
wh.,^ he was young, if he had discovered her 
infidelity to be beyond all doubt, he should have 
killed her lover, " but now," he concluded, " I 
should beat her and chase him away." ' Why 
so ? " asked the Englishman. " Because when 
one has reached my age, one knows that no woman 
is worth the life of a man." The moral crimes are, 
contrary to Dinka social custom, looked upon as 
venial. A Nuba may marry as many wives as he 
likes. 

The Nuba conception of the future life is more 
generous than the Christian, in that a man expects 
to meet his faithful dog, his goat, his horse and his 
cattle in the next world as well as his kindred. 
He expects to live with his wives as on earth, but 
no children are born. Each community lives 
happily a life similar to that they have led on 



BAGGARAS AND NUBAS 277 

earth, under the government of the Arro, and no 
strife or discord mar this Heavenly existence. 

The inhabitants of Southern Dar Nuba do not 
trouble their heads much with religion, and as far 
south as Talodi there are no kugurs, only female 
rain-makers or medicine women. They believe 
the Supreme Being to be female, because produc- 
tive (cf. the Kabbala). These women, or priest- 
esses, " scry " by means of pouring grease into a 
gourd of water, and discover thieves by this form 
of crystal-gazing. Marriages are very free and 
easy in the South, and divorces to be had without 
the least difficulty. 

The Northern Nubas have a ceremony corre- 
sponding to baptism. The child to be named is 
brought when it is a fortnight old to the chief 
kugur, who kills a chicken and, dipping it into 
a bowl of water, sprinkles the child and its relatives 
with it. Then he takes the child into his Arro's 
house or hut, spits on it and pronounces a name 
over it which has been chosen by its parents. 

The marriage customs are very interesting. The 
usual price to pay for a bride is about eight head 
of cattle. On payment of two, the bridegroom can 
claim his bride. She does not live in his hut, but 



278 MY SUDAN YEAR 

remains under her mother's roof until her first 
baby is born. Then he completes half the pay- 
ment, and takes her into his own house. The 
remaining half of the marriage payment is made 
when the children of the marriage are grown up, 
out of the cattle paid for married daughters or 
from earnings of the sons. Should the couple be 
childless, half the agreed cattle are returned. 
Cousins may not marry. 

The Nubas are governed by Meks, or Kings, 
aided by a council of old men, including kugurs, but 
sometimes the kugur is the only ruler. As with 
the Dinkas, old age is highly respected. 

Of the Baggaras I have written in a former 
chapter (See Chapter XI). They live in moving 
villages, and are rich in flocks and herds, living a 
simple pastoral life similar to that led by Abraham 
and his tribe centuries ago. The Baggara girls are 
very comely, do not veil, and seldom trouble to 
cover the upper part of the body. They are free 
of restraint, and even young maidens ride about 
unprotected on their bulls. One inspector told 
me that he used to derive much useful information 
from these women, who are far more communica- 
tive than the men, and liked to call on him, to 



279 

sit and joke with him in his tent and discuss the 
local news of the day. They dress their hair in 
many plaits.* 

A Baggara wedding is accompanied by curious 
customs which are somewhat reminiscent of mar- 
riage by capture. The bride-to-be goes out early 
in the morning accompanied by a girl friend, and 
hides either in the house of a neighbour or in the 
bush. The bridegroom rides to a little distance 
outside the village with his friends, accompanied 
by a following of women, who utter the shrill 
joy-cries called zagharit, sometimes going as far 
as to the next village. Then they return, and a 
big meal is prepared by the older women, while 
the young maidens, stripped to the waist, and 
holding the long ends of their silk firkas or sashes 
in front of them and waving them in time to the 
music, form in a line, and move round and round 
a centre, only in the opposite direction to the hand 

* The slave women think the long hair of the freed woman a 
token that she is not pious. For when, in the beginning of the 
world, all things woke in the long grass and, carrying offerings, went 
to Allah to receive the breath of life, the long-haired woman carried 
a basket of durra on her head like the short-haired, but it was only 
half full. On the other hand, the long-haired women despise those 
whose hair is crisp and short. 



280 MY SUDAN YEAR 

of a clock, singing appropriate songs. In the 
centre musicians beat the drums, and the young 
men run behind and fire rifles over the girls' heads 
into the air, sometimes forming part of an outer 
rim, like the rim to the spokes of a wheel. 

Later, comes the marriage feast and the " finding 
of the bride," the bridegroom having been pre- 
viously apprised in secret where she is. During 
the festivities it is not supposed to be etiquette 
for the bridegroom to eat very much. The 
ceremonies finish by the bridegroom leading the 
bride to the newly built hut or tent, around 
which there are dances and beating of drums 
for some time afterwards. 



CHAPTER XXI 

SIMPLICITY AND THE SMILE SUPERIOR 

~1T)ES, the god of laughter whose squat little 
figure is to be found so often amongst the 
symbolic amulets placed in Egyptian tombs, was 
of Sudanese origin. And very appropriately, for 
the black man is on the whole a light-hearted 
person, who laughs easily. But he is too simple 
to understand humour in the European sense of 
the word, and it is this very simplicity which often 
presents a humorous side to the foreigner. The 
humour of the negroid is too crude for the civilised 
palate. Like the good-tempered fellow that he is, 
he is always ready with a smile that shows his 
white teeth, but he can see the laughable in situa- 
tions or stories more Rabelaisian than Rabelais, 
more Boccaccian than Boccaccio. Though in the 
main kind-hearted, like some unimaginative child, 
he can see exquisite funniness in the sufferings of 

281 



282 MY SUDAN YEAR 

some poor creature, and what to a European would 
seem brutal will seem to him supremely amusing. 

Some one denned humour as a sense of dispro- 
portion. It is usually a consciousness of superi- 
ority. The man who laughs is the man who is 
secure in superior information, wisdom, wit or 
sophistry. The naivete of the Sudani supplies 
plenty of food for this kind of laughter. 

For instance, there is the story of the agricultural 
show at a village on the Blue Nile, where an ex- 
hibitor walked away with his bull in high dudgeon 
when he was awarded the first prize. When 
questioned, he said that his bull was worth far 
more than that ! A similar innocence was recently 
displayed by a Sudani in Khartoum whose son 
was ill. He met an English acquaintance, who 
inquired after the invalid. The Sudani replied that 
one of his friends had just given him a bottle of 
medicine which he hoped would cure the lad. 
" But your friend's illness may not be the same as 
your son's ; you had better take your son to the 
hospital and let them prescribe for him." " Oh/' 
replied the man, " but the medicine came from the 
hospital, so it must be all right ! " 
Certain stories of this kind have become regular 



SIMPLICITY, THE SMILE SUPERIOR 283 

club chestnuts, as, for example, the history of the 
telegraph clerk in an outlying district of the White 
Nile who, finding the desolation upon his nerves, 
telegraphed to head-quarters, " Cannot stay here, 
am in danger of life, am surrounded by lions, 
elephants and wolves." The hard-hearted operator 
at the other end wired back, " There are no wolves 
in the Sudan." He received a second wire: 
" Referring my wire 16th cancel wolves." 

At distant stations, if a government official 
dies, some one is usually sent to make an inquiry. 
Accordingly, a wire was dispatched by a clerk at 
a distant station to the authorities, " Station- 
master dead ; wire instructions." The authorities 
contented themselves with telegraphing back, 
" Ascertain if dead ; and if so bury." After a 
short while an answer came. " Have ascertained 
dead by hitting on head with fishplate ; have 
buried." 

But the most amusing form of simplicity is, 
perhaps, the Sudanese equivalent of babu English 
in letters. A certain government official received 
the following letter from a former employe, the 
object of which appears at the end. The spelling 
js unaltered : 



284 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Esq. 

" DEAR SiR, " KHARTOUM, 29/xi/1910. 

:f Thanks to God the father of fatherless 
to whom I should worship day and night morning 
and evening at sunset and sunrise, repeating the 
hottest prayers at dead of night for the great 
and heavy obligations He owed me and saved 
me from leading astray and brought me out of 
darkness to light and blessed me by the honour 
and acquaintance and fortune of serving under 
you Your person that is ornamented with high 
virtues and embellished with pearls of excellent 
characters and seasoned with the nicest graces 
and humanity. 

" I weep for these excellent days and valuable 
time I have had spent with you and hope it will 
come back to me. How much I would express 
the utmost desire and extreme anxiety of my 
having the chance to be again with you Each 
individual had a happy time that goes off and 
remains in his memory so any time be with the 
last period I passed with you I do not forget the 
fruitful seeds of kind treatment fraternal and 
mutual respects, that it was not direct between a 
Junior and Senior as the case should be, which 



SIMPLICITY, THE SMILE SUPERIOR 285 

had been flourishingly sown by your esteemed 
hand rapidly grown out of croptime and reaped 
very quick with the produce of golden fruits of 
love and hearted regards and warm respectful 
towards you. It was, Sir, the yield of land 
that was ploughed with lively feelings and tender 
sympathy. 

" They say, reputation of great men's lives lives 
after them but goods often entered with their 
bones. But exceptionally your goods will remain 
to-day and to-morrow, for ever and even for any 
time that come. 

"I, Sir, have nothing more to show my loyal 
submission and gratitude except by my soal and 
heart which were represented here on paper and 
ink. 

" Before closing my letter like to let you know a 
piece of material change which is based on the fact 
that our Department has been divided into two 
parts, i.e. the Agricultural has been separated from 
Lands and am was taken on the latter (Lands) 
This new position gives me a great satisfaction 
and it really due through your valuable recom- 
mendations and excellent reports previously sub- 
mitted in my favour to late Director Mr. . 



286 MY SUDAN YEAR 

" I think, Sir, it would be a much more trouble 
if it would be convenient in soliciting you to send 

a word to your friend Mr. my actual Chief. 

I would be glad if you would kindly do it please. 
Anyhow I have the full hopes in knowing that you 
will favour me with such request. 

" My best regards to your noblesels, 
" Yours humble and faithful, 



"Lands Department." 

Another gem of this order was given me by a 
judge in Khartoum, who received the letter which 
I append. 

" SIR, 

" I beg to bring to your notice the fol- 
lowing 

" I am a merchant by trade and has been such, 
honest and reliable, for twenty years, and the 
33 bills attached partially prove my statement. 

" It is evident that a merchant is not invariably 
on the side to gain but in the most of circumstances, 
perhaps, loss is more or less indispensable ; in 
the case of loss, should the merchant find no 



SIMPLICITY, THE SMILE SUPERIOR 287 

financial supporter, failure is apt. This is the 
case that surrounds me now. I could not find 
assistance or support of any sort from my dealers 
or merchant comrades at my present juncture. I 
have dealt with these merchants and exchanged 
business for some long time without the least 
touch of honesty on my part. 

" Backwardness in market which was general 
on all merchants and loss sustained in my contract 
for the supply of bread to the students of Omdur- 
man School have in the years 1908 and 1909 
caused me to suffer considerably financially. Such 
facts are well known to all my creditors. 

" On the other hand merchants with whom I 
deal have put me to suffer too in a bad way of 
business. They take their bills signed from me 
and lodge them in the Bank and when the time of 
payment is due I find it most necessary to refund 
or interests are to be added to the debt, making it 
worse and worse. It would then be wiser to dis- 
pose of the goods by sale with lower prices to help 
pay off the bills that become due, thinking that I 
may have some ample time, later on, to make 
good the loss already sustained. Not only this 
kind of treatment but they have withheld their 



288 MY SUDAN YEAR 

business hence, this result which I do not in any 
way like. 

" One should not like for himself but honesty 
and truth. You will kindly notice that I not 
encouraged to act in this way until I tried all 
possibly supposed fruitful efforts but in vain. 

'' Under these circumstances I hope as I beg from 
our just lawyers to consider the case to my favour 
so that my future may not be injured being a 
supporter of a family of 16 souls. 

" I have the honour to be 
" Sir, 
" Your obedient servant, 

" Sgd. ." 

An English lawyer practising in Khartoum told 
me that he once received a letter addressed in 
English to " the Notorious Solicitor " ; a dictionary 
translation of an ordinary honorific in Arabic. 

After all, why should one smile ? Without 
doubt, the Englishman as he stumbles along in 
Arabic makes infinitely funnier mistakes, though 
the native preserves absolute gravity. And yet, 
small things like these tickle the Englishman's 
ribs, and fit into his conception of the country, 



SIMPLICITY, THE SMILE SUPERIOR 289 

relieve the ennui of routine and enliven many a 
wearisome business. They certainly enter into 
the picture which one carries away from the Sudan 
when one leaves it, do these tales of simplicity. 
May this be my excuse for introducing so puerile 
a chapter. 



19 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE OUTLOOK 

A HEALTHY baby puts on weight very slowly, 
but regularly. It is not entirely a matter 
for congratulation if its weight goes up with a 
jump, in fact it may be as harmful to the child as 
a decrease. So it is with a country. It should 
gain in prosperity, but not by leaps and bounds. 
Such leaps are usually due to false optimism, to 
speculation and bogus values, and, like all feverish 
impulses forward, are followed by dangerous re- 
lapses. Hence Lord Kitchener, when he went up 
to open the railway to El Obeid, while he registered 
his satisfaction at the progress already made, laid 
stress again and again on the admonition " steady." 

The Sudan has been in the hands of the Anglo- 
Egyptian Government for twelve years. What 
was its financial position when taken over, and 
what is it now ? 

290 




VILLAGE SCENE, WHITE NILE. 



THE OUTLOOK 291 

It had no position at all then. It was stricken 
by famine and disease, depopulated, uncultivated, 
devastated. Egypt came to the rescue. She 
provided certain sums annually, and also grants 
for various purposes, that something might be 
made out of the ruin. She has continued her 
annual grant ever since in fact, she has found all 
the money for the administration of the Sudan, has 
built her railways, met the yearly deficits, and paid 
the expenses of conquest. It is true that that sum 
has dwindled down to a hundred and sixty-three 
thousand per annum when the amount paid back 
by the Sudan Government for the partial main- 
tenance of the Egyptian army in the Sudan is 
deducted, but that is, after all, no inconsiderable 
sum. In fact, at first sight it would seem that 
the partnership was a very unequal one, Great 
Britain merely using the Egyptian purse and giving 
her no more real voice in the ruling of the purchase 
than the late Empress Dowager of China gave her 
colourless co-regent. It must, however, be taken 
into account that Great Britain, if she has not 
financed the Sudan, has given it of her best in the 
matter of administration, and that the conquest 
of the Sudan was at first, professedly, merely 



292 MY SUDAN YEAR 

undertaken in order to preserve the peace of the 
frontier, and to ensure to Egypt her water supply. 
It was, in fact, linsurance on a large scale, not an 
investment promising immediate profit. Its pri- 
mary objects have already been attained. That 
the Sudan will, eventually, not only cease to be a 
financial burden on its Northern sister-country, 
but become a self-supporting concern, can only be 
a matter of time. Slowly and surely the annual 
grant is decreasing. In 1899 the subvention in aid 
of the civil expenditure of the Sudan was E149,000 
more than in 1912. 

Moreover, the trade returns have certainly been 
satisfactory. Before the Dervishes harried the 
land, the Sudan was an agricultural and pastoral 
country. It is becoming so again slowly. It 
should be the larder of Egypt. Egypt is already 
drawing on the Sudan instead of upon foreign 
countries as formerly, for her supplies of cattle, 
durra and wheat. Every year over twenty thou- 
sand bales of cotton are exported ; Kordofan 
yields gum and sesame ; from the swamps and 
thickets of the South come precious tusks of 
ivory ; from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, wild gum ; and all 
these products and others find their market in 



THE OUTLOOK 293 

Europe. In short, the trade returns, like the 
revenue, have been steadily mounting. 

But that fact need give rise to no hysterical 
pride when one considers the vast possibilities of 
the country and how small is this result compared 
with what it might be were the country properly 
developed. The cotton cultivation is but ex- 
perimental so far, though cotton has been grown 
for years. The rubber, though favourably re- 
ported upon, is less than experimental ; that is 
to say, there is little, if any, cultivation of it 
in the Sudan yet, though a concession has been 
granted for the collection of the wild rubber in 
the South. There are other possibilities, almost 
as wide, waiting solely for enterprise and capital, 
capital above all. 

The Sudan is a vast untilled garden. Sir William 
Willcocks recently pointed out that if five million 
were expended on reservoirs, training works and 
power stations in the Sudd region alone, at present 
so useless and pernicious a district, the result 
would prove " as profitable as a gold mine and as 
permanent as water power depending on the 
melting snows of the Alps." 

The representative of the British Cotton- Growing 



294 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Association who visited the Sudan this spring with 
the idea of seeing what its possibilities as a cotton- 
growing country were, reported that in the Gezira, 
the " island " between the two Niles, there is a 
huge country containing at least five million acres 
of first-class cotton soil, a country as large as the 
Egyptian Delta ; not to mention the cotton that 
might be grown as rain-crops farther South, or 
at Tokar and Kassala, where floods from the 
Abyssinian mountains water the soil annually, 
leaving a rich deposit. But for this purpose, 
irrigation, railways, and commercial development 
would be necessary, entailing an initial expenditure 
of some twelve million pounds. 

Now where are these millions to come from ? 
Who will find the gold that is to transform the 
Sudan from a useless waste into a profitable and 
smiling paradise ? Certainly not Egypt. Mr. 
Hutton, when reporting on the possibilities of the 
country to the British Cotton- Growing Association, 
used these words : 

'' The reproach was thrown in my face that the 
British Government do not even pay for the re- 
pairing of the British flags which fly side by side 



THE OUTLOOK 295 

with the Egyptian flags on every public building 
in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Is it reasonable, 
is it fair, to ask the Egyptian Government to find 
the money to enable the Sudan to compete with 
them in cotton growing ? Let us ask ourselves 
this question : Who is the individual who has 
found the greater part of the money for the Govern- 
ment of Egypt to hand over to the Sudan ? There 
can be but one answer the bulk of the money has 
been found by the struggling cultivator of the 
Delta, and he is the man who pays for the repairing 
of the British flag. Again I ask, is it reasonable, 
is it fair for a wealthy country like England to stand 
on one side and allow the burden to fall on the 
shoulders of the Egyptian fellahin ? '' 

I do not think that Mr. Hutton puts the matter 
fairly. He appears to suggest that Egypt will be 
asked to spend money from which no benefit will 
accrue to her. But this is not so. The develop- 
ment of agriculture and the consequent increased 
prosperity must result in the further reduction 
of the annual contribution, and ultimately the 
Sudan will become a source of revenue to Egypt. 
Assuming that the vision of a prosperous Sudan is 



296 MY SUDAN YEAR 

not only a mirage over the sandy waste, money 
spent by Egypt at this stage in irrigation and 
other works is merely an investment of funds of 
which the profits will, in due time, return to that 
selfsame fellah of whom Mr. Hutton speaks with 
such commiseration. But Egypt has other heavy 
expenses to meet at the present time. The Delta 
has to be drained at great cost, road-making has 
to be carried forward, and the public purse is none 
too full. Mr. Hutton is perfectly right in asking 
Great Britain to come to the rescue and to provide 
the funds so urgently needed for the Sudan. Both 
countries would reap the benefit of such an under- 
taking, and of the two partners, Great Britain is 
considerably the richer. 

Much has been said and written on the subject 
lately, and it is only with diffidence that I venture 
to mention a few elementary aspects of the question 
in this chapter. I have noticed, however, that 
there is a tendency to speak of Great Britain and 
Egypt in the Sudan as if they represented two 
separate foreign governments in working partner- 
ship. But it should be remembered that the 
Sudan is not a part of the British Empire any more 
than Egypt is, and the administration under the 



THE OUTLOOK 297 

Condominium Agreement is based on the idea that 
Egypt and the Sudan shall benefit one another. 



Mr. Button's scheme, however, is a more modest 
one than the development of all the possible cotton 
fields of the Sudan. He suggested that the British 
Government should provide a million pounds as 
a loan to the Anglo-Egyptian Government for 
building railways and for irrigation to begin with ; 
guaranteeing, on behalf of the British Cotton- 
Growing Association, the same sum for commercial 
development of the country. At the same time 
a further loan from the British Government of 
200,000 was requested, to be spent in experimental 
and research work for the advancement of cotton- 
growing in the Sudan. 

Now, what is the position at the present ? 
Granted that the commercial future of the Sudan 
lies in cotton, what are the practical difficulties, 
and how far have these difficulties already been 
met? 

Cotton can be irrigated by pumping, by rain or 
by flood. Pumping is too expensive, rain is un- 
certain, so that flood becomes the surest method 
of irrigating the fields. The proposal for the 



298 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Gezira at the present moment is to build a dani 
over the Blue Nile at Sennaar which will raise the 
level of the water in the river and fill a main canal 
and a series of branch canals almost all the way to 
Khartoum. To test the land, an experimental 
pumping station was formed at Tayiba in 1911, 
and the results of the year were excellent. Cotton 
has, as I have said, been grown for years in the 
Sudan ; the principal farms are those of the Sudan 
Plantations Syndicate at Zeidab in Berber Pro- 
vince ; of Mr. A. H. Capato and other smaller 
enterprises in Khartoum Province. Hitherto, how- 
ever, owing to the water difficulty and the expense 
of pumping, they cannot be said to have been 
very lucrative. But as far as quality is concerned, 
Lancashire spinners could obtain no better. 

The Gezira irrigation scheme, i.e. the dam at 
Sennaar and the canal system, will, in course of 
time, put 500,000 acres under cotton. Now there 
is one difficulty to be faced in this scheme as well 
as in every other undertaking in the Sudan. 
Skilled labour is almost always imported, and 
unskilled labour is difficult to get and ridiculously 
over-paid. 

Take, for instance, the Gezira scheme, since this 



THE OUTLOOK 299 

is under discussion. The number of labourers 
required to work one block of thirty feddans is 
at least ten people, including women and boys. 
Hence if an area of 250,000 feddans only be taken 
(the whole plain is three million feddans), the 
number of people required for such an area would 
be nearly 100,000. Now the entire population of 
the Sudan, old and young, women, children and 
babies, does not reach the number of three million 
at present, and of these only a small proportion 
are workers. 

Moreover, though the native can live in ease and 
luxury according to his standards on 3d. or 4d. 
a day, the rate of wages is so high that it ranges 
between l\d. and Is. At the experimental pumping 
station at Tayiba before referred to, as much as 
two shillings a day (ten piastres) had to be offered 
in order to procure labour, and even then it was 
difficult. And the more exorbitant the rate of 
wages, the scarcer labour becomes. The reason is 
not far to seek. The Sudanese are accustomed to 
slavery, that is, to forced labour. A system of 
wages has its advantages and its dangers. When 
the wage given is too high the native will only 
work for a time sufficient to provide him with 



300 MY SUDAN YEAR 

his year's expenses not a vast sum and that 
is all. The training and experience of generations 
are against the habit of acquiring wealth. In the 
old times, to be reputed rich was to invite the 
plunderer and the robber ; hence the native 
developed the habit of earning enough for his 
needs and no more, as a wage-labourer ; or of 
working because he must as a slave or a soldier. 

The Belgians in the Lado were wiser than we ; 
they never permitted the wages to be high. A 
story told by Lieutenant Grogan in his book is 
so illustrative of the attitude of the native mind 
towards wages, that I must quote it here from 
memory. A certain Englishman informed his 
cook that as his services for the past year had been 
satisfactory, his wages would be increased to three 
pounds a month. (He had been receiving 2 10s.) 
The man was more puzzled than grateful, and 
retired to think it over. It resulted in his coming 
to his master and demanding six pounds, owing 
him from the past year, his argument being that 
he was worth no more now than when he was 
engaged, so that the balance was due to him. 

An attempt has been made to confront the 
difficulty by the formation of a Labour Bureau in 



THE OUTLOOK 301 

Khartoum and the provinces. But, although a 
step in the right direction, this system of registered 
labour has not proved successful up to the present. 
It has been truly said that the officials who keep 
the registers are the only people who work and the 
so-called labourers refuse to do a hand's turn. 
In many cases registered workmen have been sent 
out under contract, and then refused to begin work 
unless the agreed wages were raised. 

When I was discussing this question with one 
English official, he remarked, " There is another 
solution, of course why should we not import some 
of the thousands of the superfluous millions in 
India ? They are industrious, the climate is suited 
to them, they are excellent cultivators, and they 
would make the desert blossom while we are 
waiting for babies to be born and for the lazy to 
turn over a new leaf." This suggestion may have 
been brought forward before and conclusively 
shown to be impracticable, but I mention it here 
for what it is worth. Chinese labour was imported 
into South Africa ; why not Indian labour into the 
Sudan ? 

The optimist says cheerily, " Wait till the popu- 
lation increases. The children are swarming in 



302 MY SUDAN YEAR 

the villages like lizards, and a generation or two 
will work wonders." No doubt this is right. It 
is to be hoped and expected that the attitude of 
the native will change with time. The new 
generation, with no memories of the troublous 
times which have so effectually unsettled their 
fathers, may offer more promising material. But 
waiting is slow work, and if the cotton schemes 
and others are to be carried out to the best ad- 
vantage, labour on a large scale will be needed 
before long. 

On the other hand, it is possible that the difficul- 
ties have been exaggerated. The native is not 
absolutely blind to his own interests, and when he 
sees that a scheme is taken in hand in earnest, he 
may take a different view of the value of his own 
work. It is hard to persuade the native that 
industrial proposals are not mere " kalam," or, 
as we should say, " gas " ; and until something 
tangible is before him, it is not easy to gauge his 
attitude. 



APPENDIX 

KHARTOUM BIRDS 

FROM NOTES SUPPLIED BY ME. BUTLER 

PP ARROWS, similar to the English variety, but 
brighter and smaller, fly in and out of the houses 
in the town, and frequently build their nests in the 
rooms. Yellow Sparrows, with bright canary yellow 
heads and breasts, frequent the gardens and cultivation 
in flocks, but do not enter the houses. Bulbuls, rather 
smaller than a thrush, grey, with black heads, are 
familiar garden birds ; their notes are loud and cheery, 
if not very musical. Sun Birds, tiny little creatures 
with curved bills and long tails, flit about the gardens 
and feed on the flowers. The males are shining metallic 
rifle-green, with crimson on the breast ; the little 
females are dull greyish yellow. 

Little Bee-Eaters love to perch on fences or telegraph 
wires, from which they glide off after passing insects, 
returning again to their posts. 

Hoopoes, fawn-coloured, with cinnamon crests, and 
wings and tail broadly barred with black and white, 
flutter among the bushes, or walk daintily about, 
probing the crevices in the sun-cracked ground with 
their long bills. 

303 



304 MY SUDAN YEAR 

Senegal Turtle-Doves coo in the trees ; Namaqua 
Doves are abundant in the gardens, beautiful little 
doves with long tails like parroquets. 

Fork-tailed brown Kites and black and white 
Egyptian Vultures soar and wheel overhead, or sit in 
rows on the sandbanks in the river. Along the river's 
edge Pied Kingfishers hover above the water like 
kestrels, or perch on some convenient stone or empty 
boat. Now and again a V-shaped flock of Grey Cranes, 
or of Demoiselle Cranes, pass over high in the air, 
announcing their approach with loud liquid notes. 
Ruffs, Ringed Plovers, Godwits and Sandpipers feed 
upon the mud at the river's edge. Small grey and 
white Terns wheel backwards and forwards over the 
river, with an occasional big Black-backed Gull passing 
among them. 

Colies or Mouse-Birds fly about the gardens in little 
flocks, and feed on the figs and dates. They are 
queer little brown birds, with crests and very long 
stiff tails. They cling and climb about in all sorts 
of parrot-like attitudes. 

Many familiar summer visitors to England may be 
recognised in Khartoum in the winter Swallows, 
Sand Martins, Redstarts, Lesser Whitethroats, Reed 
Warblers, Willow Wrens, Garden-Warblers, CMff-Chaffs, 
and so on. 

On the open land near the town sandy-brown 
Crested Larks are met with singly or in pairs. Quaint 
little Finch-Larks, with chestnut backs and black 
heads and breasts and white cheeks and collars crouch, 



APPENDIX 805 

on the ground, and Yellow Wagtails, Pipits, and Short- 
toed Larks feed in scattered flocks. 

Tiny grey Palm-Swifts, with attenuated wings and 
tail, are plentiful, and fix their nests to the hanging, 
fan-shaped leaves of the Dom palms. 



20 



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